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A PRETTY BANDIT 


BY 

FRANK BAILEY MILLARD 



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1 1897 

assassisA 



NEW YORK 

THE ESKDALE PRESS 

I Madison Avenue. 





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Copyright, 1897, 

by 

THE ESKDALE press, 
61 BROADWAY. 














CONTENTS 


PAGE 

A Pretty Bandit 7 

The Girl Reporter 35 

All for a Mormon Girl 55 

A Notch in a Principality 69 

A Struggle with Insomnia 89 

The “ Bar L ” Brand 109 

’I^ish of Alkali Flat 123 

Horse-in-the-Water 135 

Perfectly Legal 153 

Kate of the Desert 163 

Athletic Miss Brown 181 

The Brakebeam Rider 203 

On the Caliente Trail 221 

Lolita 235 

The Making of Her . . . ' 249 

Moll, the Cowgirl 263 


A PRETTY BANDIT 



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A PRETTY BANDIT. 


I. 

The Professor was not drunk that day, for the very 
good reason that there had been nothing to drink. 
None of “ the boys had come over from Sunrise or 
Yellow Dog, and Metie had kept those few dimes of 
hers away from him, so there was no bribing of China 
Jim to run down to Johnson’s with the bulge-top gin 
bottle. It was with a great thirst, therefore, that the 
poor sick Professor saw his little wife get ready to 
depart from the miserable cabin. 

“ Breaks my heart, Metie, to see you go. ” The 
Professor’s voice was of the deepest and dryest, and 
to-day it had a little crack in it. “ If I was able to get 
out and rustle, you shouldn’t do it. But I’m almost 
bed-ridden with that awful stomach of mine. Yes, 
pretty d — d badly run down. And all from drinking 
creosote stuff such as Johnson sells It’s just cor- 
roded the inside of me. Still you oughtn’t to suffer 

7 


8 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


for it ; but you do, and it’s a beastly shame. Nobody 
knows that better than I do.” 

The girl with the large blue eyes and the pretty 
round cheek which had turned so red and then so 
white three years ago when the Professor told his love, 
or what he thought was his love, held up a brown 
jumper, shook the dust out of it by the open door and 
looked coolly up the canon, where the pines fringed 
the mouth of the big tunnel of the Sunrise Mine. She 
generally had a cool way about her. You would never 
have known to look at her what a dead failure Metie 
Brown’s life had been. She was quick on her feet and 
ready to smile, while her way of putting trouble behind 
her was truly wonderful. She whistled when she 
shook the jumper, and if she heard what the Professor 
said she did not seem to heed it. He was always say- 
ing something. 

But of course, Metie, if you do what you say you 
can do — and I don’t know any reason why you shouldn’t 
— it’ll be the making of us. There’s gold up there on 
Tonto Creek somewhere — ’riferous drifts wider’n this 
house — quartz mines that would open the eyes of the 
millionaires of the Sunrise if they knew about them. 
And wouldn’t we want to deal carefully with the Sun- 
rise, though ? They wouldn’t get the best of us if they 
could. Oh, no ! Remember how they gouged your 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


9 


father. If it hadn’t been for them we would be rolling 
in wealth now. Wouldn’t they snap up our mine, if 
we got one on the Tonto "i I guess not ! If we were 
smart we could get our own price. And remember 
what the Indian said about the gold in the gravel up 
on Tonto Creek. Nobody that knows anything about 
mining has ever been up there. It’s too bad you have 
to start out all alone. But you’ve got the grit and you’re 
strong as a pony.” 

Professor Brown looked at Metie proudly and she 
looked back frankly. She had seen through this sham 
of a man long ago — had come to know that there was 
little good in him — that, in fact, he was as bad as they 
made them, and that if he was Professor of anything 
at all it was of an ability to dispose of ardent spirits. 
Yes, she had made the mistake of her life. It was too 
late to do anything about it now, but she could warn 
other girls — she could tell them that being yoked at 
seventeen to a man of forty, and a drinking man at 
that, was hugging folly to one^s bosom. Meantime she 
must go to work. 

When the boys saw her off they joked with her good- 
naturedly about her outfit and her horse. They in- 
sisted upon making her bag of provisions a little heav- 
ier. She did not care so much about that, but she did 
like the way they responded to her appeal that they 


lO 


A PRETTY BANDIT, 


should take good care of the Professor. It was really 
a shame, some of them said, that she had to go off that 
way, when the Sunrise Company, the hateful concern 
for which they toiled and sweated, should have done 
something for her long ago toward restitution after 
swindling her father out of his share of the claim. 

** Good-bye and good luck to you, Metie! Good 
luck ! Good luck ! ” everybody said. 

They all liked her at the Sunrise and at the Yellow 
Dog, too. They liked her cool, airy way and her big 
frank, friendly eyes, with the eyebrows that had such 
a jolly “ lift ” to them. 

“ Good-bye, boys — don’t forget the Professor ! ” 

And so she started off up the hill and waved the men 
of the Sunrise a last farewell from the summit with her 
big blue and white handkerchief which she carried to 
tie about her neck and shield it from sunburn. She 
stepped quickly along the trail, The pans, cups, 
shovels and things rattled and clattered a merry march- 
ing tune. She whistled a low accompaniment. Her 
heavy, short skirt was scratched by the brush, and 
sometimes she had to hold a branch back to keep it 
from striking her face. Toward the cool nightfall she 
was glad she wore the big warm blouse and the man’s 
slouch hat. Her blanket was none too thick, though, 
and she shivered a little as she lay near the campfire, 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


II 


her rifle by her side. And she was just a bit afraid, 
too, there in the wild. For an awful hush lay over the 
gulch, and the big stars looked down unpityingly. 
Something glided through the brush and she nearly 
screamed, for she thought it was a mountain lion. But 
she was tired enough to sleep before long. While she 
slept she saw away off up in the mountain a rivulet of 
running gold that leaped down from a rock and ran 
into a bag held open by Metie Brown. 

Next day began the real fight with the manzanita 
brush, for the trail had run itself out in the mazes of 
the mountain, and the stout-hearted, stout-limbed girl 
toiled on toward Tonto Creek. Her skirt was torn, 
her gloves were cut and there were scratches on her 
pretty round face. But she kept on all that day and 
the next, and finally she stood by the bawling, sprawl- 
ing Tonto, which came down hurriedly through a gash 
in the mountain. It was hard work fording the stream 
and it was hard work climbing along the rough canon- 
side, while as for rattlesnakes there were enough to 
frighten any woman in the world. And they did 
frighten Metie Brown now and then. It was hot in the 
canon, too, and very tough prospecting, take it all 
around, so Metie thought. There had been no favor- 
able signs as yet. She knew the signs when she saw 
them. She had not lived in mining camps all her life 


12 


A PRETTY BANDIT 


for nothing. She broke pieces of rock with her ham- 
mer, she tested the sand and gravel as she went along. 
But not a “ color ” rewarded her careful search. 

It grew very tiresome, but she saved her strength 
whenever she could and surprised herself by her endur- 
ance. She ate heartily three or four times a day. 
Hers was no drawing-room lady’s appetite. Up and 
up the noisy Tonto she toiled, picking up and throw- 
ing away pieces of rock in which there was no promise 
and letting her prospecting pan fall from her tired 
hands many times in utter despair. At last she sat 
down on a big barkless pine log which lay white in the 
dusk, and became very thoughtful. This Tonto journey 
was a ghastly failure and she was a long way from a 
home that was not worth returning to. It took all her 
native airiness to make anything of the situation, and 
she searched in vain for that something merry which 
she had generally managed to find in the most hope- 
less plight. Finally her sense of the ridiculous came 
to her aid. What young woman ever found herself in 
such a ludicrous position as this ? The little laugh that 
came with this thought was not hysterical. She lighted 
her campfire got out her cards for solitaire and beat 
the game twice, hand-running, which lightened her 
heart still more. She slept soundly after that and was 
up and about before daylight. She had made up her 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


13 


mind to start for home that day, but first she wanted 
to round the next bend, and see what it looked like 
over there. It was rougher traveling than ever. In 
one place she tied her horse and then went on without 
him for half a mile. It was to be the last of the up- 
journey. She came to what she thought was the turn- 
ing-point, and with listless hand and despairing eye she 
tested some of the white rock that lay at her feet. 
There were some tiny specks in it which she knew for 
gold, but it did not look like “ working ” ore. Still it 
was worth looking after. She had followed up quartz 
outcroppings before and they generally led to nothing. 
But as she followed this lead it seemed to improve. It 
took her to a high bank below which the Tonto broke 
and swirled among the rocks. There she found fine 
outcroppings. As she picked up piece after piece of 
the rock she knew that she had made a “ big find ” at 
last. Her eyes glistened and danced. She felt like 
screaming for joy, but she held herself in. 

“ Too good to be true — too good to be true ! ” was 
all she could say. 

The ore seemed the finest at the very edge of the 
bank. She was careless in her moment of triumph. 
Reaching far below for a piece of the rock, she sud- 
denly found herself sliding down the steep bank. Her 
hands flew out like wild things and she clutched at 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


i4 

every bush and weed that grew on the face of the rough 
scarp, but still she slid down with growing swiftness 
and there was the white, angry water just below her. 
It seemed a long way down, but at last came a quick 
stop, a dizzying, blinding crash and the world was lost 
to her. 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


IS 


II. 


“ Guess I know what I’m talkin’ about, Green. It 
ain’t any girl ’at lives in a hundred miles o’ here.” 

“ That isn’t what I’m worrying about. It’s whether 
they’ll ever get that doctor up here from Coyote. It’s 
a long way — a long way.” 

It was the high-pitched, rasping, man’s voice and the 
low-toned, pleasing one in which these two spoke that 
came strangely to Metie. In that first groping she 
could not even faintly feel her situation. What was 
she doing there on that couch and what made that big, 
blazing fire in the fireplace over there the brightest and 
cheeriest in all the world ? It was just as if 

She shut her eyes quickly and gripped her hands, for 
a bad pain had caught her in the forehead and held her 
hard for a moment. 

The men had seen her start up and Green Rivers 
whispered low and told the other man to keep quiet or 
he would kill him. Then he tiptoed over to her side 
and stood looking at her. When she opened her eyes 
again it was with her old frank friendliness of gaze and 


i6 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


a trustfulness that made Rivers feel that everything 
was all right and that he could be excused for living in 
the same world with her. For at the very first opening 
of those eyes, their beauty and tenderness had done 
work that no other woman’s eyes had ever done before 
upon Green Rivers. 

“ Sh-h-h ! ” he whispered. “ Don’t try to talk, and 
if anything disturbs you. I’ll know the reason why.” 

Then he motioned Buck Magendie into a corner, put 
on his coat and tiptoed over to the girl again, a tin 
dipper full of water in his hand. The girl drank and 
lay back. She did not say, “ Where am I ? ” or “ Who 
are you ? ” or anything of that sort. She merely told 
Rivers not to trouble himself about being so quiet — 
she was feeling quite well, except for the pain that 
came to her head now and then. 

“ I’ll fix that,” said Rivers. And he got a bottle of 
camphor out of a chest, and wet a cloth with it, and 
tied it about her head. 

“Very nice — thanks,” she said, and smiled. 

When the doctor came the whole room smelled of 
camphor and Metie was sitting up in bed. 

“ It’s no concussion, or anything like that,” said he 
— “just a little shock. She’ll be up to-morrow.” 

So she was, and she seemed as bright and as lively 
as ever. At the bacon-and-potato breakfast Green 


A PRETTY BANDIT 


17 


Rivers told her how he had heard her scream when 
she slid down the bank, and how he had rushed down 
the creek and found her lying on a little shelf just by 
the water’s brim. 

“ Like the yellow primrose,” said she, smiling. 

“ I got you out and packed you up to the cabin,” he 
went on, “ and here you are. But what in the world 
were you doing with that outfit ? ” 

“ Prospecting,” owned Metie, as she turned a little 
condensed milk into her coffee from a can. “ Trying 
to locate a mine.” 

“ Well, you did locate one, by the looks of things, 
didn’t she. Buck .? ” 

“ She did that,” replied that sturdy miner, with his 
mouth full of bacon. “ But the trouble is. Miss (she 
had merely given her name as Metie Brown, as she 
generally did nowadays), that all the property around 
here has been located already. Me and Green and John 
Ridley has took it all up — all that’s worth anything.” 

Buck had not minded Green’s kick under the table, 
nor did he see the reason for it in Metie’s downcast 
look. 

Yes, she had made a big find and nearly killed her- 
self in the finding, but to what purpose > Still she 
fronted the raw cruelty of it all with one of her old 

smiles. 

2 


i8 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


“Just my luck,” said she. “ But I didn’t see your 
notice or anything, and I thought it was all right. ” 

“We’re working around on this here side,” said 
Buck. “ We’ve opened it up pretty well and made a 
road through Cayuse Canon. Goin’t to set up a mill 
’fore winter. We think we’ve got a stem-winder in 
Last Hope. An’ the strangest thing is that you can’t 
find a chunk of pay ore any where’s around, ’cept right 
in here. Can’t you keep your big feet off’n me. 
Green ? Yes, it all lays right in here where the old 
Cayuse jines the Tonto.” 

Then they left the breakfast-table. 

“You long-eared, tough-bitted, unshod ass ! ” groaned 
Green at Buck when they were alone together. “ You 
couldn’t see that I nearly made a mess of it, but you 
had to get in and break her all up. Have to put a 
stick of giant powder under you to make you open 
your eyes.” 

Metie went out and saw the “work.” Then she 
walked up the Cayuse Canon trail a bit all alone under 
the pines, and tried to hum a tune she knew. It was 
a wretched attempt. She gave it up and sat down on 
a rock and looked at her hands. They were sun- 
burned, scratched, and the nails had many white specks 
in them where they had come in contact with the 
rocks. It was a sorry business for a young woman — 


A PRETTY BANDIT, 


19 


this prospecting — a sorry business. She looked at 
her clothes. She had had to throw away her tattered 
skirt and put on a pair of blue overalls. Looking at 
these, her sense of the ridiculous smote her again, and 
she laughed away the tears that had begun to fall 

Next morning came a struggle. She had tried to 
get up, for she was going away that day, but she felt 
weak and feverish, and had to lie back and be cam- 
phored and nursed and fussed over by Green, who 
sent again for the doctor, that learned man coming up 
very much out of breath and saying “ exactly ” when 
she described each symptom. 

“ Got out too soon, that’s all,” said he, wisely. “ It 
was quite a shock she had, — just as I said in the first 
place.” 

So it was nearly a fortnight before Metie was up 
and about again. Meantime the big strong Green 
Rivers, who had shaved most religiously every day 
since she came into camp, kept fussing and worrying 
about and stopped all the blasting and the other 
noises at the mine. He would have dammed the creelj 
and stopped the noise of that if he could. 

When finally Metie came to leave Last Hope, she 
felt really sorry about going, for some reason or other. 
Rivers walked by her side and led her horse a little 
way up the Cayuse trail. He seemed very thoughtful. 


20 


A PRETTY BANDIT 


Something that he had choked down for several days 
had to be blurted out when it came to the last hand- 
shaking and good-bye. 

“Tell you what, Metie,” he blundered, venturing 
boldly upon the name for the first time, “ I hate awfully 
to let you go. Can’t you just stay and — and marry 
me ? ” 

Her cheek burned bright of a sudden and she looked 
away among the brakes. She had let them call her 
“ Miss Brown,” taking a certain satisfaction in it, and 
now it was “ Metie,” and here was the greatest- 
hearted, the very best man she knew, hurting himself 
with the tool of her own carelessness — her vanity, she 
now deemed it. She bit her lip when she saw what 
she had done. It was her easy, mining-camp way 
leading her into a ghastly situation. After all he had 
done for her, too ! She could not look into the brown 
eyes that lighted up the fine face of Green Rivers as 
it had never been lighted before. For awhile she could 
say nothing, and then she began a feebly-worded and 
not very grammatical explanation of who she was and 
what she was. And she saw his head going lower 
and lower upon his broad breast as she told her 
story. 

“ And I never ought to have let you call me any- 
thing but ‘ Mrs. Brown.’ I don’t know why I let it go 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


21 


on after you first called me ‘ Miss/ I never thought. 
Oh, I’m so sorry ! ” 

“ So am I,” he said unthinkingly, but very truth- 
fully. “ But of course nothing can be done about it.” 
His gloomy face took on a grim smile as he went 
on : “ It was just your bad luck here, you know — pros- 
pecting on a claim that somebody else had taken up. 
I wanted to drown myself in the creek when I found 
you had your eyes on that claim. I would willingly 
have let you jumped my share of it.” 

This set him into a new drift of thought. She was 
horribly, wretchedly poor and out of luck and perhaps 
he could help her. He made a blundering offer of 
assistance which she, of course, couldn’t think of 
accepting. 

“ You’ll find this a good deal easier road home,” he 
said, as there was not much left to say. “You want 
to go around by the Black Butte way and follow down 
Bear Creek after you cross the divide. It’s a little 
shorter that way than by the Tonto Canon, and 
nowhere near so rough.” 

Then he put her horse’s bridle in her ungloved hand 
and asked her if she wanted to strap her rifle on the 
pack or carry it. 

“ Better have it handy,” he said, “ though it is hard 
work carrying it all day. Guess I’ll put a couple of 


22 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


loops on the pack and swing it that way, so you can 
get at it quick if you should happen to need it. Or, 
ril tell you — I’ll go down to Black Butte with you. 
You might run across drunken miners or Indians or 
something.” 

“ Oh, no, thanks. I’ll get along. It won’t be half as 
bad as Tonto Creek.” 

She thanked him again and said good-bye and then 
talked awhile longer. It was not until after they had 
said their farewells for the fifth time that she actually 
started. Green strode back in great haste, as if he 
had forgotten something. Metie went along less 
slowly. She heard a blast from the mine that 
she had located. It seemed the last explosion of her 
hopes in that direction, and it was her turn then for 
the grim smile. 

Foot- weariness, stinging deer-flies, heat and rough- 
going were of the smallest consideration on that ugly 
home-journey. As she neared Sunrise and thought of 
the Professor and the utter poverty and wretchedness 
that lay before her, a cutting sense of the injustice of 
it all struck her more sharply than did the springing 
brush as it switched her face. 

Something happened that made her feel the smart 
of her position more than ever. She stopped at a lit- 
tle cabin to beg a cup of tea from a stout Irish woman 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


23 


who lived there and whose husband “mined it ” up the 
canon. The woman stared at her when she let her in 
and kept looking at her curiously all the while she 
made the tea. Then a quick suspicion came into the 
narrow mind, and out of the door started Metie’s 
hostess, beckoning her to follow. 

“ It’s aginst me princoiples, it is,” she said, as Metie 
stood in the doorway and looked at the woman won- 
deringly, “ to be harboring the likes of yez the day. 
It’s bad loock enough me and me mon John McMonigle 
has had widout timptin’ Providence wid any faymale 
Jonah in men’s feathers.” 

Metie raised her hand. It had been thoughtless of 
her not to explain and she wanted to do so now, but 
there came forth such a swift torrent of words from 
the irate woman that she weakly gave it up. 

“ By me sowl, y’r a swate one, yez are — a swate one, 
indade. Coom around here in dacint skairuts an I’ll 
set out me best for yez ; but it’s no new woman 
hoodoo I’m lookin’ for. If I let ye drink tay here, 
John won’t bring home another ounce for the nixt 
year, ’deed he won’t. So that’s all about it.” 

The woman kept up a warm fire, under which 
Metie retreated down the trail, with wet eyes and the 
feeling of an outcast. And this feeling was mixed 
with an undefined regret in respect of a big man in a 


24 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


blue blouse. He had been so kind and there never 
could be any way of repaying him. True, he had her 
mine, but that was of a piece with all her other folly. 
She had not the slightest claim upon it. She looked 
at her dusty, slouching man’s clothing and a great 
wave of self-pity swept over her. She was not always 
so sordid, but the eager search for gold and her brief 
gloating over new-found and quickly lost-treasure had 
developed that mercenary spirit that is latent in her 
kind. She was on the Black Butte road, going along 
slowly and sorely, with reluctant feet. When she 
came to the turn toward Sunrise she stopped and sat 
down on the ground, while her horse nibbled the 
dusty brown grass by the roadside and looked at her 
now and then with the inquiring look that a horse can 
give. He had never seen Metie in such a mood be- 
fore. 

“It’s a pretty rough life, isn’t it, Billy?” she 
sighed. “ Mighty little that’s fit for a horse to eat and 
nothing worth waiting for in sight. Ugh ! ” and she 
bit her lips, twitched her eyebrows and was not Metie 
Brown at all. Some miners whom she did not know 
came along and inquired the way to Black Butte. 
They looked at her curiously, and one of them grinned 
sardonically when he heard and noted her woman’s 
voice. When they were beyond the turn she heard 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


2 $ 


their haw-hawing, and the world seemed a more dis- 
gusting, unpitying world than ever. And it was so 
unfair. How was it that some people had such great 
showers of w^ealth descending upon them — more than 
they had any need for ? There was the Sunrise Com- 
pany that had cheated her father out of a share that 
was worth half a million. What robbers they were — 
worse than highwaymen. That was the way of the 
wealthy. That was the way to acquire riches. She 
had always been so honest — so little touched by the 
mining-camp philosophy of wealth. Had she not been 
over-scrupulous ? In her small reading she had seen 
somewhere the words, “ Honesty is a negative virtue.” 
Did it mean that it was not wrong to steal, after all ? 
With this bitterness of thought to keep her company 
she sat there till nightfall — sat stiffly and strainedly 
and made the very worst of a situation that was bad 
enough without intensifying reflection. 

A certain well-known sound made her start. It 
was the rumble of the Sunrise stage, coming along the 
road toward the mine. She had grown cold and stiff 
sitting there and she was glad that something had 
come to arouse her. She stood up and peered about 
in the darkness for her horse. He had strayed a little 
farther along the road. She slipped the halter-strap 
around her hand and took a few steps toward Sunrise. 


26 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


A fierce intensity of hatred and spite took possession 
of her. Back to Sunrise ! Why, to return empty- 
handed was to go to perdition. She was in a maze 
of despair. Where could she turn ? The stage 
rattled nearer. It was, somehow, a welcome sound, 
after all. It carried with it the suggestion of wealth, 
the importance of which had for the time such an 
abnormally strong hold upon her. Whose wealth was 
it in the box at the driver’s feet ? The Sunrise Com- 
pany’s. It was always sending gold down to the mint 
and bringing it back in coin. They used a good deal 
of money at the mine. It was about the last of the 
month. Suppose they had sent up the miner’s pay ? 
It would be a pretty sum. And yet how little of the 
gross they gave to their hard-working men. They 
must have safes and safes full of money somewhere. 
That on the stage amounted to little. They owed 
much more than that to her, lawfully and rightfully. 
It was hers, and could be in her own hands had she 
but the pluck to take it. 

The rifle felt cold when she clutched it and it chilled 
her very heart. For the moment she was a woman of 
iron. The stage was on the point of passing. 

“ Hold up your hands ! ” It was a fierce voice, 
though not as gruff as those voices the old driver had 
heard on a few such occasions before. His fighting 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


27 


days were past, and that the quiet person who held the 
muzzle of the black rifle so close to his head had “the 
drop ” on him, the most devoted servant of the com- 
pany — which he was not — could not have denied. 
The one passenger displayed no active interest in the 
hold-up. 

“ Throw out that box ! ” 

There was little delay in the execution of this order. 
The box came clanging over the wheel and struck the 
ground with a thump and a rattle that made the horses 
plunge and cavort. 

“ I s’pose that’s all, young man,” said the driver, 
with forced humor, “ unless you want to take the har- 
ness off n the horses.” 

“ Turn ’round now and drive back as fast as you can.” 

The driver turned his team, let off the brake, gave 
the wheelers the lash and back down the grade dashed 
the stage. 

To break open the box with a hatchet from her pack 
and remove the gold which made a heavy bag when it 
was all out, did not take long. Metie led her horse 
until she came to the river, into which she threw all 
her pack except the money and the rifle. Then she 
mounted with a rush and sped along the rough road 
to Sunrise, her brain on fire and her hair streaming 
about her — a wild woman of the night. 


28 


A PRETTY BANDIT, 


III. 

When Bob Holt, the stage-driver “ showed up ” at 
Sunrise he was the sheepiest-looking man that had 
been seen in camp for a good while. He put every- 
thing out of the boot before he said a word about the 
robbery. As he came out of his office, Superintendent 
Miles was strangely light of bearing and on his face 
was an odd smile. He was generally gruff enough and 
Holt anticipated a severe dressing-down. 

“ Well,” said the Superintendent, “ where’s the 
box ? ” and he looked aside at the paymaster and 
grinned again. 

“ Here it is, what’s left of it,” was the doleful Holt’s 
reply. “ I picked it up in the road where the robbers 
left it.” 

“ Held up, eh } Why didn’t you say so in the first 
place ? What’s the matter with you ? What’s your 
shotgun for } Couldn’t you stand ’em off ? ” and the 
Superintendent really seemed to be just ready to break 
down laughing. 

“Well,” blustered Holt, who didn’t mind a scold- 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


29 


ing, but who hated to be laughed at — an entirely new 
sort of treatment anyway for such a mischance, “ I 
could a-stood off two or three easy ’nough, but when it 
comes to four big strapping ruffians, all armed to the 
teeth, I must say I ” 

And then they roared — every man who had been let 
into the secret of the fun. And they slapped Bob 
Holt on the back and poked him in the ribs and 
made him turn purple all over with their gibes and 
jests. 

“Come in here,” said Miles, leading the way into 
the office. “ How many big men was it that held rifles 
on you ? Look here ; here’s that coin, every dollar of 
it ! ” And he threw the bag down on the counter wuth 
a crash. “ Metie Brown brought it in this morning. 
She was your four big ruffians, all armed to the 
teeth.” 

Holt stood staring, dumfounded. 

“ She’s a good ’un, isn’t she ? Best joke I ever 
see played,” ran the crowd’s comment. 

“ Always was a lively girl.” 

“ An’ got the grit, too.” 

“ She didn’t know her old man was dead or she 
wouldn’t a-carried on so all-fired reckless.” 

“ No, that’s so.” 

These latter remarks took some of the edge off the 


30 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


the joke for a time, but it cost Holt a week’s wages to 
completely irrigate the dry mirth against which he 
stumbled at every turn that day. 

Metie heard of it and she pitied Holt. The home- 
coming which had so opened her eyes and turned the 
tide of her feelings so completely, had made her the 
Metie of old. She was sincerely sorry that the Pro- 
fessor was dead. It was for him more than for her- 
self that she had stolen the money, but she had come 
back to herself as she neared Sunrise and had placed 
the bag in Superintendent Miles’ hands, with laughing 
eyes and a light remark, before she had learned that 
the Professor was no more. 

In the months that followed, Metie could not get up 
a really bad case of the blues, try as she might. The 
casting off of that heavy bag of gold had lightened 
her wonderfully and had been quite the making of her. 
She had been set to work in the Superintendent’s 
office, pottering over the day-book and writing letters 
with the Sunrise heading at the top. — The Superin- 
tendent said he liked honest stage-robbers and would 
give any of them honest work if they sought it. This 
with one of his wrinkled smiles, for he never sus- 
pected that Metie had taken a misstep that time on the 
stage road. Mrs. Miles liked the girl, too, and took 
her into her cosy home on the hill, out of sight of the 


A PRETTY BANDIT. 


31 


squalid cabin where she had led a life that would have 
wholly embittered and soured some girls. 

So when Green Rivers came down from Last Hope, 
looking perfectly elegant in a new black suit and 
making the boys all feel sick because of his blue silk 
tie and boiled shirt, he found her rounder of face and 
whiter of skin than he had dreamed that dark “ pro- 
spector girl ” could ever become. He liked her much 
better in skirts, too. He and Metie talked a good 
deal over the counter and much more out under the 
pines. There was a knowing grin on the face of every 
miner they met — that is, on all the faces whose owners 
did not give themselves over to gnawing jealousy or of 
those of the few pestiferous pessimists you will always 
find in every community who think any kind of marriage 
is a failure. 

But the general comment was that Metie Brown had 
not prospected up in Tonto Canon for nothing. Hers 
was the biggest find that any young woman had ever 
made within a hundred miles of Sunrise. 








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THE GIRL REPORTER * 


There were five of us, and the world was ours. It 
is a rare sight to see, and one that does the heart good 
— that of a party of slaving newspaper men off duty 
for a week, and turned loose where there is air to 
breathe and something green to rest the eye upon. 
Pranks of yearling calves in the lane, capers of colts 
on the grass, are but the meaningless antics of animal 
life. But our antics meant something. They meant a' 
sweeping away of ball and chain, a throwing down of 
dull grim walls, and no night police, fires, or suicides 
for seven great, glorious days. 

We were at Sisson, which, as everybody ought to 
know, is in northern California, near the end of the 
great Sierra chain. Bunzie, who always used the word 
“ excavate ” instead of “ dig ” in his copy, and had to 
be restrained from poesy by the city editor when there 
was a tannery conflagration to be written up, was on 

* Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers. Published by per 
mission. 


35 


3 ^ 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


his stomach before snow-capped Shasta, which, he in* 
sisted, was the proper attitude to assume before so 
“ wonderful a manifestation of the powers of the Deity.” 
But Gordon, the Late Mr. Johnson, and myself merely 
lounged around. The Late Mr. Johnson was not in his 
coffin. The title had been given him by the city editor 
for persistent procrastination in showing up when he 
had an important assignment. There, I had forgotten 
“Ott”; but “Ott,” whose full name was Ottinghouse, 
hardly counted. He was merely an echo of the Late 
Mr. Johnson, for whose easy Bohemian ways he had a 
profound admiration, copying them as closely as he 
could. Then, too, “ Ott ” was not a newspaper man. 
But he was fresh from the university, and he meant to 
be one. 

The Late Mr. Johnson was telling the story. He was 
always telling stories, and “ Ott ” was absorbing a vast 
stock of them for future recital. This time the story 
was on a theme that Johnson seldom touched, for he 
hated shop, and this was shop. I don’t believe that 
any of us expect “ Ott ” heard the first part of the tale. 
The pine scents came to us so freshly, the smoke-drift 
moved so lazily before our eyes over on the side of the 
wood-clad buttes, near whose base we had come, and 
the little creek was telling a tale so much more charm- 
ing than dry old Johnson’s, that we let “ Ott” have the 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


37 


preface all to himself. But, according to Bunzie’s no- 
tions — he had caught a word now and then — the story 
did not fit into the picture. He wanted it closed up. 
The neatest way to do this, as he believed, was to blurt 
out : 

“ Oh, hang your long introductions, Johnson ! Your 
yarns are just like your copy. A man can always find 
a good line for a starter on the middle page of it. 
That’s what Fenslow says.” 

Now Fenslow was Johnson’s city editor, but no allu- 
sion to him would cut short the story. Johnson kept 
on, and finally came to the place where the story really 
began. It was about “ that singular anomaly,” as 
Gilbert calls her, “the lady journalist.” 

“ She came to Fenslow in the beginning of that awful 
rainy winter three years ago,” said the Late Mr. Johnson. 
“ Her name was Savage — Gertrude Savage.” 

“ I remember her,” said Bunzie. “ I was working 
on the Tribune then, and the Shield wasn’t in it that 
year.” 

“ Too much economy then. That was the trouble,” 
said Gordon, between puffs; “but Fenslow did well 
with the city news, though he did hash up the evening 
papers for all they were worth.” 

We were now deep in the shop again, as you see, 
and the pine scents and the smoke-drift were lost upon 


38 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


US. Not even the grandeur of Shasta could avail 
against shop. 

“ For a girl she was a rattling good reporter,” John- 
son went on. “ I never saw a better. She was not 
one of those who run around with a fore-and-aft cap 
on and try to be mannish while they gather in the stuff 
for the paper. Fact is, she was modesty itself. She 
walked up to Fenslow’s desk very timidly when she 
made her first appearance. I was his assistant then, 
and so, of course, I heard all that was said. 

“ ‘ There isn’t enough work for the regular reporters, 
let alone extras,’ said Fenslow, after she had made ap- 
plication for a job in tones that would have won over 
a grizzly. Not a whine, not a whimper, and yet noth- 
ing brassy in her whole talk. ‘ But I’ll see what I can 
do for you, Miss Savage. If you are from New York 
and have worked on the Precipitator, you ought to be 
able to suit us.’ 

“ ‘ Thanks,’ she said, and smiled. ‘ I know enough 
not to bring a scrap-book, or I could show you some 
of my articles written for the Precipitator, May I go to 
work to-morrow ? ’ 

“‘Let’s see. Yes; you can take that women’s tem- 
perance meeting in Brigg’s Hall at II A. M. It is on in 
the afternoon too. Keep it all in five hundred words, 
please.’ 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


39 


“ She pulled out a small note-book, and with a dainty 
pencil put down the memorandum, in rather a shy way, 
as I thought. But that is what I liked about her — 
nothing mannish, not the least. Though it’s deuced 
rare among girl reporters.” 

“ Why don’t you say women reporters } ” put in 
Bunzie, on whose fine ear “ girl ” grated. 

“ Because this one was nothing but a girl, and a slip 
of a girl at that. And then you never heard of a woman 
reporter, did you ? They’re all girls. Don’t try to ring 
in your poetry on the profesh, Bunzie. Devote that to 
Shasta. 

“As you all know,” went on the Late Mr. Johnson, 
“ California journalism has many quips and quirks that 
are not known to our brothers of the East. Sometimes 
it’s very hard for a newspaper man from there to make 
it go with us, and it’s surely a deuced sight harder for 
a girl. There was one thing that favored Gertrude, 
however. She was not in the office a w'eek before 
every man there fell in love with her. That’s a big 
thing for a girl reporter, because it means no end of 
pointers on what to do and where to go to get the news 
in the easiest way. So she got along swimmingly. 

“ A morning newspaper office is the place where you 
see the scales fall off the shams of life. This is in- 
stanced by the pursuit of the new^spaper man by the 


40 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


conceit-stuffed fellow who wants his virtues made 
known by your types and paper, and who thinks those 
types and paper were made for the express purpose of 
lifting him upon a pedestal. But there was no sham 
about the devotion of the Shield staff to Gertrude 
Savage. You couldn’t blame them. Her black eyes 
were so darkly lashed, and her cheeks were so peachily 
fleshed — so round — and her brown hair fell so care- 
lessly and so lightly upon her brow, that ” 

“ Who’s getting poetical now ? ” came Bunzie’s 
centre shot. 

“As I was saying,” went on the Late Mr. Johnson, 
as if Bunzie’s interruption was no more than the drop- 
ping of a pine cone from the branches above us — “ as 
I was saying, they couldn’t help adoring her. In a 
way, she became one of the boys, laughing and talking 
with them as if they were all her old chums, and yet 
demure enough all the time, and the very soul of a 
lady. Nothing that ever struck the local room, not 
even Fenslow’s savage lecture after the outbreak 
against the coin-borrowing rule, ever did the men so 
much good as the coming of the girl reporter. We 
had only had one or two of them before, and they were 
no earthly good — cheeky things from Hill’s Seminary, 
who drove the copy-reader to the ragged edge of de- 
spair by their essay style of writing up. Gertrude 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


41 


knew the ropes too well to put anything but pure news- 
paper English into her stuff, and when she handed in 
her wad of copy there was precious little work in it for 
the desk man. 

“ The way she sized up the fellows that tried to ring 
in ‘ ads ’ on her when she was out getting news, and the 
way she tumbled the hopes of self-important ones who 
were itching to be interviewed, won Fenslow over 
almost as readily as did her clean copy. He gave her 
all the work she wanted, and I think she hit the busi- 
ness office pretty hard on pay-days, for, besides her 
regular assignments, she got in yards and yards of 
space. Fenslow said it used to make his arm tired 
measuring it all. This went along for several months, 
and then campaign rot crowded out so much of the 
other local that she had to hang her hopes of a good 
sack on Sunday supplement specials. For, as you 
know, there are a good many kinds of work you can’t 
give to a girl reporter, and hustling about among ward 
politicians and round among the clubs before the fall 
elections is one of them. 

“ I didn’t know for a long time after she came to us 
that there was a mystery about the girl ; but there was. 
Not that she could be put down with the people for 
whom the glorious climate of California works a change 
of name, as they say it does in habits. Nothing of 


42 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


the sort. But that she had, for some reason or other, 
run away from New York, I managed to learn in the 
course of time. I found out through — No, I’ll not tell 
how I found out.” 

As we knew the Late Mr. Johnson had a way about 
him that would have drawn confidences from the fur- 
niture in the office, we did not doubt that he had ob- 
tained his information from the girl herself. So we 
merely asked what the mystery was. 

“ Why, she had been engaged to a newspaper man 
back there, and he had thrown off on her. I even 

learned his name. It was Byron Palethorpe. D 

him ! ” 

It is queer how those mountain echoes take up words 
— even the slightest sounds. I am sure I heard come 
back in triplicate a bunch of damn hims ! ” Now 
that I think of it, I believe I saw the lips of the other 
listeners move at the same time, and there may have 
been — but I am not positive on that point — a fourth 
echo. 

“ It seems that he had found her an orphan, with a 
light purse and no one to look out for her. So he had 
helped her to get work on a morning paper, and she 
had got to thinking so much of him that it broke her 
all up when she found that he was getting very reck- 
less as to whiskey. She tried to reform him, but he 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


43 


did not reform so easily. Then they had a quarrel, 
and she broke the engagement, and left New York.” 

“ Then he didn’t exactly throw off on her,” ventured 
Bunzie. But he went no further when he saw our 
dark frowns. 

“ Well, to tell the truth, I don’t know exactly how it 
was,” continued Johnson ; “but, at any rate, she was 
on the Shield staff, and there was a great big anchor 
back in New York. For I saw readily enough that 
the man who had won her heart still had it in his 
keeping.” 

“ All of which is very much mixed, as Johnson’s 
stories generally are. ” 

That shot from Gordon. 

“ Not so much mixed as your account of the De 
Puey-Simpson runaway match,” fired back Johnson, 
“when you married the girl to the wrong man. 

“ Let him go on,'’ I cried, shying a clod at Gordon. 

“ She repented and wrote to him. Two or three 
letters came to her in return, vowing that the cause of 
their trouble had been removed — he had sworn never 
to look upon the fiery fluid again, and was coming out 
before long to marry her, and take her back to New 
York. 

“That fall, before the election, the girl reporter 
didn’t make any great headway with her bank account. 


44 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


As I have said, there wasn’t much for a girl to do on 
the staff just then, and, as you know, you can’t depend 
on Sunday supp stuff for a living. But she got along. 
Her friends of the local room would have helped her 
through anything if she’d have let them, but she was 
mightily independent. 

“ I didn’t think to tell you about Johnny Maddern. 
He was the hardest smitten of the whole staff, and 
would have gone through fire for her. Often when 
she had a night assignment he would cut short his own 
work to go to a hall or elsewhere, and see her safely 
to the office, and somehow he generally managed to 
see her home, too, after she had handed in her report. 
Well, Johnny was a good boy, and so blindly in love 
that he couldn’t see the lay of the land, or, rather, of 
her heart, and I didn’t feel like spoiling his dream by 
telling him of the Palethorpe fellow back in New York. 

“ One night when the wind was howling like mad, 
and it was raining copy files and blue pencils, I met 
the girl on Market Street. She was all bundled up in 
her rubber gossamer, and her white face showed through 
the darkness like a wraith’s, and I am sure that all the 
specks of water on her cheeks were not raindrops. It 
took me aback for a time — that white face — and I 
don’t know whether or not I nodded as I passed. I 
am sure she did not see me, for she gave no sign of 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


45 


recognition. When I had gone half a block further, 
I turned about and ran back to her. 

“ ‘ What’s the trouble now ? ” I asked, as I walked 
by her side, putting as little as possible of my usual 
bearish tone into the query. She said nothing for a 
while. Something seemed to be choking her. I 
thought she grew whiter as she said at last, in her low 
sweet voice, but with none of its old cheeriness or 
confidence of tone : 

“ ‘ You have been kind to me, Mr. Johnson, but I do 
not know why I should further burden you with my 
troubles. Still, if you feel enough interest in me to 
know, I will tell you. He’s here.’ 

“ I think she must have felt me start, for she was 
lightly clinging to my arm as we walked along the 
street. That was the trouble with the whole crew of 
us — we all thought too much of that girl. Not too 
much, either, for, devil take me, if she wasn’t worthy 
of all our adoration and a good deal mor^ ! 

‘ You mean Palethorpe ? ’ I put in. ‘ Has he been 
to see you ? ” 

“ * No ; but I have seen him, and — he was very much 
intoxicated. I did not dare to make myself known to 
him while he was in such a state. And yet I would 
like to know where he is now. Perhaps I could help 
him.’ 


46 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


“ Then indignation, strong and deep, laid hold upon 
me. Why, in the name of all her worshippers, couldn’t 
she leave that fool Palethorpe to work his own ruin ? 
I felt very much like blurting out the question. But 
then she was so deadly in earnest. I know she would have 
asked me to go and hunt him up if she dared, but I 
was not equal to that. Silence lay between us all the 
way to her door, but I thought she seemed more at 
ease when she said her ‘good-night,’ and I knew in my 
heart that in my rough, blundering way I had helped 
her. Sympathy goes a long way in such cases, you 
know, though my sympathy wouldn’t carry me so far 
as to place her in Palethorpe’s arms, even if he had 
been as sober as a mule in a tread-mill. 

“ Next day the girl reporter was among us as usual, 
but she was no longer one of the boys. As I viewed 
her, she looked to be more of a woman than before, 
and — yes, the gang of us worshipped her more than 
ever. Johnny Maddern added flame to the fire by 
proposing to her. Though she let him down as easily 
as she could, I know that this was another pain for 
her sensitive heart. From that time she seemed to 
hold aloof from us. Perhaps she realized the fact that 
such a one as she might work mischief among a lot of 
men in the way that Johnny was suffering ; but there 
may have been another thought in her mind — that she 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


47 


should keep in the darkness with her trouble, and 
struggle there with herself alone. In those days I am 
sure she passed very closely to the fires that try the 
souls of women, and of which a great brute of a man 
can know nothing. Still he did not come to her, and 
sent no word, though she knew that he was still in the 
city. It was mighty rough on her to sit at her desk, 
grind out her copy, and keep herself within herself ; 
and yet, so far as her real trouble went, she gave no 
sign. The boys thought she was waiting for the Mad- 
dern affair to cool down, and then she would come 
back, and be the merry girl she had been before. But 
I, who knew that it was deeper than that, was only 
praying that Palethorpe would hark back to where he 
belonged, for then she might feel some peace of mind. 

“ Well, winter came on in earnest, and the weather 
reports, which are very wet affairs at that time of the 
year, showed more inches of rain than we had had for 
many a season. There was an all-fired lot of work to 
do, and it kept us flying about like so many ants around 
an overturned stone. One night, when the office was 
bare of men, there came in a telephone message that 
there had been a suicide out at North Beach. Then 
the night editor wanted some one rushed out to hunt 
up something about a St. Louis scandal with a local 


48 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


side to it. And, to cap it all, in came a report of a 
shooting affair on Stockton Street. 

“ It made Fenslow tear his hair when he saw there 
was no one to send out. He rang up the Press Club, 
but there wasn’t a Shield reporter there. Then he sent 
out to a meeting that Maddern was covering, with an 
order to hustle into the office at once, for it was eleven 
o’clock, and there was no time to lose. But Maddern 
had heard of another meeting, nobody knew where, 
and had gone off to get that. Fifteen minutes passed, 
and nobody came. Fenslow was getting badly rattled. 
His assistant would not be back until midnight, and 
there was no telling where to send for him. He 
telegraphed for the man on night police, and found 
that he had gone after the suicide. But who was there 
to cover the shooting ? That was the awful question 
of the moment, and it made Fenslow dance up and 
down while he struggled with it. Then in came the 
girl reporter. 

“ Fenslow swore. ‘ If she were only a man,’ he 
growled. ‘ That’s the deuce of keeping women about 
a place like this : you can’t do anything with them 
when you want help the worst.’ 

“The girl noticed Fenslow’s agitation, and asked 
what the matter was. 

“ ‘ Why, there’s been a shooting up on the hill, and 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


49 


perhaps there’s a big story in it. I suppose the J^rib 
has had four reporters digging on it for half an hour, 
and here I haven’t a man within call.’ 

“ ‘ Where is the place ? ’ 

“ He told her, and cursed a little under his breath 
about a woman’s curiosity. 

“ The girl sprang up from her chair. ‘ I’ll go,’ she 
said, quietly, buttoning up her gossamer, for it was 
raining again. 

“ ‘ You, Miss Savage ? ’ 

“ His eyes were full of admiration for her pluck ; but 
then she was a woman, and women had no business in 
such places. 

« ‘ Yes, ni go.’ 

“ And she pinned her badge on her breast — a badge 
that was always respected wherever it was shown, 
though she had had occasion to use it but rarely. 
Gathering up some sheets of paper, she was off before 
Fenslow could make any remonstrance. 

“ She went to the house on Stockton Street, and it so 
chanced that she was the first reporter on the spot. A 
man had been badly shot by a young woman in a quar 
rel. He was all but dead. He gave the name of 
James Dorman. I don’t remember the story, but the 
girl got it all down some way or other, though they say 
she kept her eyes off the dying man as much as she 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


SO 

could, and seemed to be terribly broken up. She sent 
word to Fenslow of her success, and said she would be 
back at the office in an hour. 

“ I was standing by Fenslow’s desk when she came 
in. He asked her, as city editors always do, some 
points about the story, thinking she had not yet written 
it up. 

“ She told him in a dozen words nearly all he wanted 
to know — all except one point. 

“ ‘ What’s the man’s name ? ’ he asked. 

“ ‘ It was — he’s dead, you know. It was — you’ll find 
it in the copy.’ And she laid on his desk what she had 
written. 

“ Fenslow looked up in surprise, but he saw that her 
face was white as snow, and he guessed that the name 
meant something to her. She started away quickly, 
and as she turned, I heard a half-choked sob. Then 
I saw her reel, and grasp at the handle of the door. 
She managed to open it, though it was with an effort, 
and as soon as she let go, she fell all in a heap in the 
hallway outside. Maddern, who had just come in, was 
at her side in a minute, gasping, choking, and wring- 
ing his hands — behaving, in fact, like the young fool 
that he was. 

“ Well, we soon brought her to, and Maddern took 
her home in a cab. 


THE GIRL REPORTER. 


51 


“ ‘ Looks like a good story,’ remarked Fenslow, as he 
ran his eye over the girl’s firmly written copy. Byron 
Palethorpe — Byron Palethorpe. It strikes me I’ve seen 
that name somewhere before. 

“ Then I knew what had happened, and I cursed long 
and deep within myself. I cursed Fenslow for ever 
letting her go out on such an assignment, and I cursed 
myself for not hurrying back from the hotel where I 
had been interviewing a fat old duffer about the con- 
dition of the Riverside orange crop. I felt vaguely 
that we would never see our girl reporter again. 

“ And we never did.” 



9 Ai 






ALL FOR A MORMON GIRL. 



ALL FOR A MORMON GIRL. 


You never saw a fresher, cleaner cowboy than Montie 
Hollister. Montie was from Maine, where they make 
the boys wash dishes and knit socks if there happen to 
be no girls sent into the family. He had no sisters 
and so he was put through the housework, which 
troubled him not at all. He rather liked it, in fact. 
He brought some of his dishwashing notions with him 
to the range and many other tenderfoot ideas. Among 
these latter was a horror of seeing anybody killed. 

He was so neat with his kit, washed and shaved so 
much, and wore such fleckless jumpers and shirts that 
the boys sometimes called him Girly Hollister. 

We were a bad lot at Lucin’s. Somebody was al- 
ways getting killed and buried. When Pete Orr got 
three of Bill Somers’ bullets in him and died before 
the clock in old Ashby’s groggery could give a dozen 
ticks it made some of the boys laugh to see how ridic- 
ulously the man squirmed on the floor and with what 
a flop his head fell back against the piece of zinc by 

55 


56 ALL FOR A MORMON GIRL. 

the little stove. But Montie did not laugh. He just 
turned away his head and went out and looked over 
the sage brush in a very solemn way. I followed and 
saw him bend over and wipe his eyes with his white 
handkerchief. It affected me more to see him that 
way than it did to see Pete’s mouth open when his 
head fell back. But a cowboy with a clean, white 
linen handkerchief — just think of that ! Pete wasn’t 
anything to Montie — not even a half-way sort of friend. 
The fact was he had led the laugh on him many a time 
when the boy had done something to show his girlish- 
ness. But Montie couldn’t help weeping when he died. 

Now, you are mistaken about the boy if you think 
there wasn’t any sand in him. You ought to have seen 
him ride that bucker up at Mesilla Springs. The beast 
had never had a saddle touch his hide before, and he 
threw off every one of the six men who tried to ride 
him. You know there is a spring in the back of a 
regular broncho that comes up like the thing the Philis- 
tines or some other fellows used to throw big stones 
with when they besieged the high walls of Jerusalem. 
But this broncho had a double spring. Just when you 
thought you were coming down all right into the saddle 
after the first spring he met you half way with the other, 
and that laid you out cold. But he didn’t throw 
Montie. That boy kept on as firm as the saddlehorn 


ALL FOR A MORMON GIRL. 


57 


and rode the beast six times around the corral and up 
to the ranch house. The boss said he was a nailer, 
but the bucker had spattered Montie’s chaparejos 
with mud, and so he wasn’t happy. The boys used 
to say that Girly Hollister combed out his chaparejos 
every night before he got into his blanket, which may 
or may not have been true. 

Now about that affair of the Mormon girl. You 
couldn’t get me to tell the story for a whole band of 
long-horns if it wasn’t for two things. It has gone 
about that Montie turned Mormon himself and went 
through the Endowment House. But it isn’t so. 
They’ve got the wrong brand on him. I want to take 
the twists out of that story; also to tell about that 
affair of Big Dorkin. The credit for that business 
has been given to the wrong man long enough. 

You see the girl was the daughter of a man who 
had been a Bishop and had a front seat in the Taber- 
nacle, but he moved away from Salt Lake and died. 
She belonged to the tenth wife, I think— or was it the 
eleventh ? Anyway it was a long way from the first. 
The Bishop had all kinds of sons and daughters— red- 
headed, black-headed, white-headed, and brown. She 
was one of the dark ones, and if there was a prettier 
among the whole twenty-three girls I never saw her. 
Most of them were as ugly as sin. Her mother, a quiet 


58 


ALL FOR A MORMON GIRL. 


little woman from Louisiana, had settled in a valley by 
herself, about ten miles from Lucin’s. She had quite 
a ranch that the old man had left her and about three 
hundred head. Hers was the XB brand, with a saw- 
tooth slit in the left ear. She had Chinamen at work 
on the ranch — a strange thing for a Mormon. But 
there was a white man in charge of things for her. He 
was the hulkingest big Mormon that ever I saw. Not 
bad looking was Ephraim Dorkin. Splendid shoulders, 
big heavy neck, a head like Goliath, legs like — any of 
those big fellows, and hoofs on him like any Missourian. 
He was proud, and he wore twelves when he should 
have worn fourteens, and the boys used to say that his 
boots were full of feet. Yes, he was proud, and he had 
reason to be when you put him alongside of the rest of 
the male Mormons thereabout. They were ugly brutes, 
most of them. 

You could see at once that Big Dorkin thought he 
owned Jess Beamster. Jess did not wear the poke 
bonnets of the rest of the women of Mormondom, nor 
that ugly gown that you see on them that hangs straight 
down on three sides, is ankle-short in front and trails 
in a pointed pennant behind. No, she harnessed as 
she pleased, and she always looked trim and interested 
you. Her mother didn’t care. In fact, she leaned a 
bit toward the reformed Latter-Day Saints and the re- 


ALL FOR A MORMON GIRL. 


59 


vised Book of Mormon, and she didn’t believe that the 
Lord would strike her daughter dead if she came out 
looking rather smart now and then. 

When Montie first saw that girl she had on a pink 
something and a little flat, red hat with beads on it 
and a dotted veil that came down to her lips. The 
combination struck him right between the eyes. He 
was more babyish than ever after that, and when Shorty 
Spence laid out Frank Van Zile, he wet his handker- 
chief so that you could have wrung out enough tears 
from it to have watered a sheep. 

I remonstrated with Montie. 

“ You can’t go in for Mormons, greeny,” said I, in 
my off-hand way. ‘*Why don’t you marry a greaser 
girl, and be done with it. There’s Anita, over at Old 
Spanish Dick’s. She’s a good one — pretty as your 
Jess any day in the week, and with eyes like live coals 
when she gets angry. Think how she’d trum-trum on 
her guitar of nights and how she’d dish up chili con 
came, hot tamales and things. She’d make it lively for 
you — the greaser would — but she wouldn’t be bothering 
about ‘the ordinances,’ ‘the Paraclete,’ ‘the imposition 
of hands,’ ‘ the endowments ’ and the seven bulls of 
Bashan.” 

“I ain’t goin’ to let her do anything of that sort if I 
marry her,” said Monde, with his Maine twang. 


6o 


ALL FOR A MORMON GIRL. 


“ Yes, you will. And the tribe will curse you for a 
Gentile and all the people will say ‘ amen.’ You can’t 
get around it. You’ll have to enter into Zion yourself 
and become a saint with the rest of them, if you do 
this unholy thing.” 

Montie reflected while he drove a steer into the 
corral. But what did the sap-headed yqpng bull- 
puncher do but go over to Beamster’s place that very 
night. 

Now, I knew Big Dorkin wouldn’t stand much of that 
sort of thing, and I was glad when Mon tie told me 
next day that he had had a devil of a row with the 
large man, and that he had been ordered off the ranch. 

“ The coyotes will be eating you in about a week, 
Girly,” I said, “unless your keep away from there. 
Dorkin is a dead shot.” 

Montie whipped out his six-shooter and, without 
glancing at the sight, plumped a nailhead in the door 
of the dugout fifty feet away. It was the only nailhead 
you could see from where we stood, and it was a rat- 
tling good shot. 

“ I kin shoot, too,” he said, very quietly. 

The baby was getting its teeth. 

I don’t know how he got on with Jess after that, but 
he seemed to be light-hearted enough, and I take it 
that she liked his down-East ways, his twang and his 


ALL FOR A MORMON GIRL. 6 1 

fresh, clean look, for he got her picture and sent to 
Eureka for a brooch. 

I wondered when Dorkin would kill him. The time 
would not be far away, I felt sure. The big fellow 
came up to Lucin’s every Saturday night, and I noticed 
he looked sourer and sourer each time. All of us made 
sure there would be a dead Maine man in camp before 
long, and we were sorry that it was going to be Montie, 
for he was such a quiet little fellow, and so clean. 

The shooting took place just before dusk in the sec- 
ond week of August. Montie had been down to the 
Beamsters* and was coming back to camp. I w'as loit- 
ering along the trail waiting for him to come up. He 
was about half a mile away from me when I first saw 
him coming along in the queer little hop-trot that his 
buckskin had. When I looked over there the second 
time, I saw some one on horseback swooping down on 
Montie from behind. The boy didn’t notice the new- 
comer at first, but he turned his head when he heard 
the clatter of the hoofs on the ground, and when he 
turned I saw he had his six-shooter in his hand. So 
the fellow coming on was Big Dorkin, of course, and I 
was going to see some fire fly. Mind you now, it was 
their own fight. Why should I have taken a hand in 
it ? A two-to-one combination is a low-down thing for 
a man to go into, even though you do feel like helping 


62 


ALL FOR A MORMON GIRL. 


out a friend. So I kept out of range and the grease- 
wood sort of hid me, but they didn’t notice me anyway 
any more than if I’d been a jack rabbit or a coyote. 

It was the prettiest shooting I ever saw for the dis- 
tance. They didn’t get close together. You see Dor- 
kin thought that would be an advantage to him, but he 
didn’t know how much practicing Montie had done at 
long range. Every shot fired hit something. One took 
Montie in the left arm. I knew that, for I saw the arm 
fall, limp-like, when Dorkin pulled, and then there 
were two shots almost together. I think Mon tie’s 
punched a hole in Dorkin’s neck, and I know that the 
other struck the boy’s mustang, for he gave an awful 
plunge. Well, they had it back and forth ; Montie, 
like a fool, firing fast, while Dorkin took it slow. But 
the big fellow seemed to be getting lightheaded, for he 
reeled and nodded in his saddle and there was blood 
running from his head and from his hand. But Montie 
was pretty well pinked. I could see that, though he 
sat up steadily enough. 

Eleven shots fired, and Dorkin had the twelfth. 

Montie couldn’t slip in another cartridge very easily 
because his left hand was no good, and so he sat there 
and waited for that last shot. 

Dorkin didn’t seem to be in any hurry to fire it. He 
had it all his own way now. He reeled and bowed a 


ALL FOR A MORMON GIRL. 


63 


minute, and then he steadied up and walked his horse 
toward Monde with a grin that spread all over his big 
face. It wasn’t the kind of grin that makes a man 
sleep well after he has seen it — a ghastly, nasty grin. 

I wanted to yell to Montie to give his mustang the 
pin-wheel, but somehow I couldn’t do it. Maybe his 
clean, steady, you-be-damned nerve, as he sat there 
waiting for Dorkin to come up, took my breath away. 
I know this, that it made my face tingle and my fingers 
clinch to see him there. 

Was that big brute never going to stop ? Great God ! 
It looked as though he were going to ride the boy 
down. It was time that I took a hand. Why hadn’t 
I done it as soon as the boy’s last shot was gone ? 

I jabbed the spurs into Nance and she gave a bound 
forward, putting me almost in range, but in that sec- 
ond Dorkin raised his pistol with an arm that was as 
firm as an iron rail and gave another ghastly grin. He 
was within ten feet of the boy, who sat there with a 
smile on his face. Just as I was expecting to hear the 
pop and see the flash, down fell Dorkin’s right hand. 
His left clutched his side, his head flopped down over 
his horse’s neck and the ball from his pistol nearly 
took the shoe off from Montie’s buckskin. 

One of Montie’s bullets had done its work just on 
the scratch, as you might say. 


64 


ALL FOR A MORMON GIRL. 


Montie and I shook hands without a word. No, he 
didn’t cry that time. I saw he needed a doctor, but 
there was something else to be done just then. 

“ Do you really want to marry that Beamster girl? ” 
1 asked. The young saphead grinned as he said, 
“ Yes.” 

“Well, you’ll never do it in the world till this thing’s 
fixed up all right.” 

I pointed to Dorkin’s well-perforated body. 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ Can’t you see ? She won’t dream of having you if 
she knew that you plunked the life but of that man. 
He’s been something to her some time, if he isn’t now. 
And then, remember, he was a Mormon.” 

“ It does look ugly, sure,” said Montie. 

“ Of course it does. What’s to be done ? Let me 
think Why, I killed him.” 

“You?” 

“ Yes.” And before he could say another word I had 
peeled off my jumper and put a bullet through one 
sleeve and another through the loose part of the back. 
Then I fired another through the top of my hat. 

Montie looked on in a dazed sort of way. 

“ You see, it was about that old T.Q. brand quarrel 
of ours. You remember that trouble Dorkin and I had 
last year ? Well, that was it.” 


ALL FOR A MORMON GIRL. 65 

“ But how about me ? ” He glanced at his arm as he 
spoke. 

“You — why you’ve got to go to Eureka in China 
Jim’s wagon on the dead quiet. When you come back 
in three weeks from now you’ve had a fight with a man 
who tried to hold you up, or something.” 

Montie’s eyes were moist with gratitude, but I hast- 
ened him away to the lone cabin of China Jim, whom 
we bought, body and soul, for two gold twenties. 

After that, when I walked into Old Ashby’s groggery 
the boys showed me the utmost respect. 

“That’s the fellow who laid out Big Dorkin,” they 
would say to a stranger in low tones as I passed along. 
“ He’s a bad man.” 

And to save my life I couldn’t help swaggering a 
little as I wore the giant’s robe. 

No ; I wasn’t at the wedding. To tell the truth, no- 
body was invited. The Beamsters kept it still for fear 
the elders would make a fuss about Jess marrying a 
Gentile. They were wedded by that little dried-up 
Baptist over from Tewks’, which was the more reason 
for keeping it quiet. 

5 


f 


* 4 

. » » 

^ * A 


/ 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY, 


■ ' 1 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY * 


“ Six Pullmans and four bobtails,” yelled Chunie 
from the fence in front of the house. “ Goodness, pa, 
don’t they fly ! There’s the whistle for the crossing.” 

“ That’s the new kind o’ ingine, with the little smoke- 
stacks — the kind that’s settin’ everybody’s grain afire 
over in Merced County,” observed Mr. Chadwick, leav- 
ing the fence and starting for the barn. “ Glad I 
plowed them three furrows ’round the wheat last 
month.” 

Near the windmill he stopped and looked back at 
Chunie, whose eyes were all for the train that was 
gliding down the straight, level track beside the mo- 
notonous row of telegraph poles. Soon it would blur 
out on the low skyline and that would be the end 
of it, as it had been of all the other trains. But 
the very dust it blew up was sacred to her. She 


* Copyright, 1892, by the New England Magazine. Published 


by permission. 


69 


70 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 


looked so lonely and so wistful that he felt bound to 
say : 

“The threshers is cornin’ to-morrow, Chune.” 

The girl’s calico dress rustled as she ran down to 
the windmill. 

“ Are they, pa } ” 

“ Coin’ to begin first thing in the mornin’. Think 
I’ll get ’em to start in on that there southeast corner. 
It’s riper down that way.” 

“ Chu — nie ! ” came from the back door of the 
house, in Mrs. Chadwick’s nervous tones, the last 
syllable ringing one octave above the first. 

“ Yes, ma.” 

The girl started slowly for the house, her eyes 
wandering about the great brown level in which their 
“ place,” though there were two hundred acres of it, 
was but a mere yellow patch. The sun prickled her 
skin as she walked, for it was the sun of the San 
Joaquin summer. She pulled her sun-bonnet further 
over her face. 

“ They’ll come and they’ll go,” she thought of the 
threshers, “just as that train did. Nothing ever stops 
here in real dead earnest. We ain’t big enough to 
stop ’em. If only somebody would come and buy 
along side of us — somebody that was real nice and 
sociable, even if they wasn’t stylish.” 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 


7 


She went inside the house. Every door and window 
was tightly shut to keep in the cool air of the night be- 
fore, according to the wise Californian custom. From 
the awful heat outside to the coolness inside the change 
was such that it fairly chilled her. 

“ Can’t you help John with that baking ? ” asked 
Mrs. Chadwick. “Your father came in only a few 
minutes ago and said the threshers were coming to- 
morrow. It was short enough notice. I ought to 
have known a week ago.” 

“ But they’ll head and thresh all to once, you know 
ma, and they ain’t goin’ to stay long.” 

“ For Heaven’s sake, don’t say ‘ ain’t,’ Chunie, and 
do try to sound your ‘ ings.’ ” 

“ All right, ma ; but what else can you expect, con- 
sidering tbe schooling I’ve had ? ” And with redden- 
ing face, Chunie threw off her sun-bonnet and flung 
herself into the kitchen, where there was plenty of 
warmth, and where John, the Chinese cook, in a white 
blouse and white trousers of great amplitude, per- 
spired over the bake-tins. Mrs. Chadwick heard her 
daughter slap the dough down on the board with un- 
necessary force, and then she went back to “straighten 
up ” the sitting-room. Though a well-bred and well- 
schooled city woman, she had often felt, since coming 
to the San Joaquin country, like throwing things, even 


72 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 


to her “ ings,” just as Chunie was doing. She felt par- 
ticularly reckless just now, when the threshers were to 
come on such short notice. And yet, like Chunie, she 
would take a genuine interest in seeing any new human 
face that might shine through the cloud of solitude that 
shadowed their lives. 

“There, Tom didn’t tell me how many there would 
be to cook for.” 

She threw her blue-checked apron over her head 
and went out to the barn, where Mr. Chadwick was 
counting grain sacks. She asked him the question, 
but he put up a thick knotted forefinger, wrinkled his 
brow and said : 

“ Ninety-three, ninety-four, ninety-five.” 

Then taking a stub of a pencil from the breast 
pocket of his brown denim jumper he put down the 
figures on the barn door, and said : 

“ Guess there’s ’bout ten, countin’ in our two, Sam 
and Jerry.” 

He turned his back and mumbled, “ Ninety-six, 
ninety-seven, ninety-eight.” 

“ Tom,” she said, softly. 

“ Ninety-nine, hundred, hundred an’ one.” 

“ Is it true that Hollister has bought the Jones’ 
quarter-section ? ” 

Mr. Chadwick made an affirmative with his chin. 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 


73 


Mrs. Chadwick’s eyes sought the barn floor, and there 
was a queer little quaver in her voice when she 
asked : 

“ Then Jones will not come out here and build ” 

“ No, he’s goin’ to keep that hardware store in 
Fresno. Mrs. Jones has gone to New York to see 
her mother. Took along the two children. Hollister 
got the land for two thousand. He’s got everything 
’round here now, ’cept ours. I cal’ulate he’s got six 
hundred thousand acres, put it all together, an’ not a 
single acre under cultivation. He could raise as good 
fruit on it as there is in all Californy, if he’d cultivate 
it. But he makes plenty o’ money on stock.” 

The man and his wife looked through the barn door 
out beyond their yellow grain field upon the unbroken 
waste that surrounded it — Hollister’s principality. Not 
a tree, not a house, not a fence on that side, save his 
own. On the other side only the railroad and the 
gaunt, unpainted telegraph poles. 

“ But is Hollister — isn’t he ever going to build ? ” 

“ No, an’ if he did it would be down near the landin’, 
thirty miles from us. You know, they say he likes the 
river.” 

“Then there isn’t going to be any — Tom, can we en- 
dure this another year ? ” 

“ Guess we’ll have to stand it. If we can stick it 


74 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 


out a few years more, mebbe that railroad junction will 
be made here, the way the paper says. If it does, we 
can sell out for big money.” 

“ Yes, but Chunie ” 

“ Well, she’ll have to stand it with the rest of us. I 
know it’s hard on the girl, but this here is all we’ve 
got.” 

“ What would Hollister give for it ” 

“ Don’t know. P’r’aps six thousand.” 

“ But the house alone is worth seven.” 

“ Yes, but that wouldn’t cut no figure with Hollister. 
Is he a-goin’ to let his sheep-herders live in a seven- 
thousand-dollar house.? No, the house would be no 
good to him. Might as well be an eight-by-ten shack, 
far’s he’s concerned.” 

Mrs. Chadwick’s gaze ran far away over the great 
plain, where the heat-lines danced and the world of 
wilderness was without end. Her eyelids trembled 
and a few drops trickled down her cheek. 

“ Now, Liddie, don’t — don’t unnerve me. I’ve got 
to do the thinkin’ an’ the plannin’ for all of us. 
Jest think real hard that everything’s goin’ to come out 
all right, an’ it will. ’Tain’t my fault, you know. I 
thought the tract would be broke up long before this ; 
but he don’t seem to want to break it — jest goes on 
addin’ ranch after ranch. They’re all doin’ the same 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 


75 


thing — Taggin, Mevis and Hiller. Hollister’s no worse 
than the rest. Don’t know where it’s goin’ to stop.” 

He turned to the pile of grain sacks. 

“ Hundred an’ two, hundred an’ three.” 

Mr. Chadwick meant all this talk to be comforting. 
By the time Mrs. Chadwick had returned to the house 
the sun had dried the wet drops on the apron she held 
up to protect her head. 

Next day came the harvesters. They set to work 
with a great rush. Sixteen horses dragged over the 
ground a mighty machine that reaped a broad swath, 
taking off only the upper part of the wheat stalks, 
merely the heads for the most part. These ran into a 
funnel and were turned at once into the thresher which 
was a part of the machine. The wheat poured into 
the sack like water from a spout. Along the way the 
machine dropped off a full sack now and again, and 
this was picked up by two men and thrown into a 
wagon that followed the thresher. 

Mrs. Chadwick and Chunie watched the operation 
with the keen interest that is felt by those who are 
having their grain harvested, and harvested by stran- 
gers, the sight of whose faces is good for lonely souls. 
And yet it takes much of the romance out of harvest- 
ing to have it done in this way — all with a roar and a 
jerk, and the grain in the bag five seconds after it is in 


76 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY 


the wheat-head. When Boaz reaped his grain, with 
one eye on pretty Ruth, he had no combined header 
and thresher. That ugly machine would have spoiled 
one of the best Bible pictures. Mrs. Chadwick thought 
of that when she looked out over the field. It was a 
fierce, eighteen-hundred-and-ninety way of doing it, 
but it saved a good deal of time and extra cooking. 

“ And it’s more like business,” remarked Chunie. 

“ Yes, but it’s wasteful,” said Mrs. Chadwick. “ See 
those heads on the short stalks that are not cut at 
all.” 

“ Well, the hogs will get ’em when pa let’s ’em in.” 

Chunie would have sat all day on the fence-top look- 
ing at the fascinating machine, as it made its rounds, 
and at the dusty harvesters, but there was work to be 
done in the house, and so she could steal only an oc- 
casional glance at them. 

By Saturday night the grain was all headed, threshed 
and sacked, and it lay piled up in a corner, with barbed 
wire stretched around it to keep off the stock. It 
would lie out there unsheltered for thirty days, no 
notion of rain entering into Mr. Chadwick’s calcula- 
tions regarding it, for that there would be no rain for a 
month was as safe a hazard as that there would be no 
Gabriel crying the end of the world in that time. 

When Sunday came Chunie put on her best dress. 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 


77 


with the puffed sleeves, tied a violet ribbon at her 
throat, frowned at herself in the glass because she 
wasn’t sure that the color was becoming, and then went 
down to the veranda. Mrs. Chadwick was sitting there, 
looking out upon the bleak stubble, where a drove of 
black hogs was feeding in what was left of the wheat. 
The north wind was shriveling up the few plants by 
the veranda and making the heavy leaves of the eucalyp- 
tus trees rattle and clash. There was a reek of dead 
vegetation in the air. The sky wore a pale, sickly 
look, all the humidity being gone out of it. Each 
fence-post and hillock showed sharp, clear and raw, 
while a heat that stifled, choked and almost baked was 
blown abroad. 

Mrs. Chadwick looked peaked and wan, as though 
she had lost much sleep. She was saying half aloud, 
“ Plowing, seeding, harvesting — plowing, seeding, har- 
vesting, over and over again. And that is all we have 
to look forward to. No neighbors, no society, no 
church, no school, no anything, but plowing, seeding 
and harvesting.” 

She gasped and started when she heard the girl’s 
foot upon the step. There was a greenish look about 
the sides of her face and her eyes were red. 

“ What is it, ma ? You ain’t sick ? ” 

“ No, it’s my nerves.” Her fingers beat the arm of 


■;8 A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 

her chair. “ This dreadful north wind — you know how 
I get when it blows.” 

“ I know — it dries you all up, and so it does every- 
body. Do you s’pose ” 

“ Yes,” clipped off her mother dryly, with the air of 
one to whom a familiar voice is rasping for the time, 
“ he will come. He always comes on Sunday. But 
it’s a sin to ride down a poor horse on a day like this.” 

“You wouldn’t have him walk, would you?” 

“ No, no. Of course not. The idea ! And I want 
him to come, Chunie. It helps out so, I want him to 
come. I want them all to come. We could have John 
get up a big dinner if they’d come. But they don’t, 
they can’t. Don’t you see, Chunie — they can’t? 
We’re so far away — so very, very far away. Don’t 
mind what I say, dear. It’s the dreadful north wind, 
you know, and my nerves.” 

She laughed a dry little laugh that made the girl 
shiver. 

“ Poor ma, it’s worse for you than for any of us, but 
I guess it will come out all right. It’s got to.” 

“ Yes, Chunie ; it’s got to. Something will have to 
be done.” 

“ How awful that wind makes your eyes look. I’m 
going in to tell John to make you a nice cup of tea.” 

She went to the kitchen and then ran upstairs to 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 


79 


watch and watch from her window, that looked down 
the trail leading from Fresno, until out of a cloud of 
dust, with his moustache and hair coated like a miller’s, 
came Dick Ruggles. When he reached the gate he got 
off his horse rather stiffly, and walked as if his knee- 
joints had become set. He limbered up gradually, 
however, as he led his horse into the stable. Then he 
went to the pump, working the handle as if he were 
used to it, and, filling the tin dipper, he drank as a 
man drinks who has ridden forty miles in the north 
wind. He pumped a big basin full of the water, in 
which he swashed and splashed and soon wrought a 
most wonderful change in his face and hands. This 
done, he turned toward the house. 

Chunie, on whom not one of these movements had 
been lost, now ran downstairs and opened the front 
door and set the prettiest and frailest chair for him. 
He sat down cautiously, for fear he might break it. 
And then they talked. 

“You want to come up to Fresno for the Fourth,” 
he said, impressively. “Going to have the biggest 
time. Ought to see our drug-store. Begun decorating 
yesterday.” 

“Yes, I’d like to go to town to stay,” said Chunie, 
speaking as if she meant what she said. “ Never see 
anybody here. Not a soul.” 


8o 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 


“ Ain’t I somebody ? ’’ 

“ Yes, but you ain’t a girl, are you ? The girls up 
there have awful good times together. When I stayed 
to Cousin Lou’s that month we went to the theatre 
three times and to a concert. I got so I could play and 
sing first-rate there.” 

“ Can’t you play here ? You’ve got a good piano. 
Is it out o’ tune ? ” 

“Good tune enough, but nobody to play for. I 
ain’t got spunk enough to practice here. It’s just 
awful.” 

When a young man is engaged, he takes such things 
as this seriously. 

“ Well, we might make it the first of October ’stead 
o’ ’way off in next May,” said he. “ I’ll get the part- 
nership in January.” 

“ No, I wasn’t hinting anything of that kind. It 
would be too abrupt.” 

Chunie’s grammar had good streaks in it. 

“Well, we’ve been engaged a long time, and I 
thought ” 

“ There’s the Los Angeles express,” she broke in, 
running to the window. “ Seven Pullmans to-day. 
Everybody’s travelling and having a good time.” 

“ Where do you want to go for your — our — wedding 
trip ? Yosemite ? ” 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 


8i 


“ Not much. You don’t get me off to no lonely 
place like that. I want to go to San Francisco.” 

“All right — that settles it; but it’s a long ways 
ahead.” 

“ ’Fraid you’ll fall in love with somebody else ? ” 
she asked, curtly. 

“ No, but you want to hold me off as long as you 
can and keep me on the ragged edge. It ain’t right to 
treat a man that way, Chunie.” 

“ Say, you like watermelons, don’t you ? Come on, 
let’s go out and get one.” 

They went to the melon patch beyond the barn, she 
leading the way. He pressed several of the big round 
melons and tapped them with his middle finger. 

“This one sounds ripe,” he said, and he cut the 
stem. Then he took the melon under his arm and go- 
ing to the well, put it in a tub of water standing there. 
While they were waiting for it to cool, they sat down 
on the well planks. 

“ Why can’t you make it the first of October, Chune ? ” 
he asked again. 

“ I’ve told you a hundred times why I can’t. My 
folks don’t want me to go.” 

“ Yes, but you’re nineteen. When do you ever ex- 
pect to be your own boss ? ” 

“ I’d go and do it this very day, but ” 

6 


82 


A NOTCH IN A FRINCIFALITV. 


“ But you don’t dare, that’s all’s the matter. I’ll 
stump you to do it, Chune.” 

A strong light came into the girl’s eye and she 
straightened up. 

“ I know 1 could if I wanted to, and — yes, it is a 
shame to keep a girl cooped up in a wilderness the way 
I’ve been cooped ever since I was a teeny little 
thing. And all the rest o’ the girls havin’ such good 
times.” 

“ Yes, and if you and I had our own way we’d a-set 
up housekeepin’ long ago. If you loved me you’d go 
right off now, spite of anybody, and ” 

“ Sh ! Here comes father. Cut that melon, Dick. 
Want a slice out of a Black Spanish, pa ? ” 


Choking, blighting and wasting — wasting, blighting 
and choking. The north wind was still at its work, 
and Mrs. Chadwick could not sleep. She crawled out 
of bed and went to the window. A moon with a bulg- 
ing face shone sharply down upon the stubble, which 
seemed ready to flare up in a yellow flame, so very dry 
it was. Her hands felt dry, too, and as she pressed 
her hot head her hair felt like dead jute. Perhaps 
Chunie was awake. She would go and talk with her, 
and the night might come to an end some time. She 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 83 

Opened the door of the girl’s room softly. The blinds 
were drawn and the room was dark. 

“ Chunie,” she whispered, shrilly. 

No “Yes, ma,” came back. 

She went to the bed, and in the dark her hand 
stroked a smooth, level coverlet. She ran to the win- 
dow, pulled a string, and a blind sprang up with a rustle 
and a click. The moon did not light the room very 
well, but well enough for her to see that the girl’s bed 
was empty. She stayed herself by grasping the foot- 
board. Then she put her hand hard against her side, 
where a sharp pain seemed to cut off her breath. The 
pain eased off, and she searched upstairs and down- 
stairs creeping about softly, but she did not find her 
girl. She went out into the barn, still wearing only 
her night dress. Two horses munched in the hay. 
The third stall was empty — Chunie’s mustang was gone. 

She gave a little shriek that made the two beasts 
snort and pound the floor with their hoofs. 

“ Gone, gone ! God bless her ! Gone ! Why, it’s 
all right. Didn’t her mother marry a man.^* They 
all marry and go away. They all go, and they leave 
the desert to the coyotes.” 

She shut the barn door after her, and her wide-star- 
ing eyes shot meaningful glances over the hopeless, 
desolate scene. She put her hands to her ears when 


84 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 


the dry crack and flap of the eucalyptus leaves smote 
her. Then she pressed her temples where pin-points 
were pricking into the bones of her skull. Her white 
night-gown was trailed through the melon-patch and 
down to the great barren field. A ground squirrel 
whisked through the stubble, and the moon, flashing 
upon his trail, made it gleam like a silver thread. The 
awful wind rustled the dead weeds along the fence, and 
they crackled when she sprang among them. She 
darted straight out into the stubble, her night robe 
sweeping and swaying like the empty garments of a 
ghost. Black demons grunted and ran away in the 
faint light. One demon would not run. He remained 
stubbornly asleep. She struck his bristly back with 
her bare foot. He squealed, sprang up and ran off 
with the rest. And she ran on after them, for they 
would keep right in her way. They made a stand at 
last and tried to chase her back, but she fluttered her 
white gown at them, and it looked so hideously un- 
earthly that they ran off again, with frightened squeals 
and grunts. 

Not all these black demons nor that scowling moon 
itself could keep her off the straight track across the 
field. It was to the mound of harvested grain that she 
was going, and when she reached the barbed wire 
fence that surrounded it, she gave a cry of delight. 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 85 

She shook her clinched hand defiantly at the black 
ones and at the forbidding moon, which had been 
conquered and was now sinking down into the 
earth. 

The ugly barbs scratched her as she crawled through 
the wires, and they tore her one garment, but she 
squeezed through somehow, and sprang up the mound, 
mounting the sacks that lay piled at the edge like 
stairs. 

And there, sitting atop of the mound, with her night- 
gown torn and stained with blood, they found her 
next morning. 

“ I’m guarding the grain,” she said, simply. “ They 
wanted to take it away, and it’s all as good as gold.” 
Then she laughed. “It wouldn’t have been right to 
have let it gone, you know. We’ve lived such awful 
lives to get it. All alone — all alone.” 

It made strong Chadwick sob when he saw the 
strange light in her eyes, and it made the tears come 
to find that she did not know him. 

Next day they took her away to town. Chadwick 
sold his grain and hogs and followed after. 

“ You may have the place for eight thousand,” he 
said to Hollister, a month later. “ It’s worth ten. I 
paid seven for the house alone, and the land’s worth 
fifteen dollars an acre if it’s worth a cent.” 


86 


A NOTCH IN A PRINCIPALITY. 


“ I’ll give you five thousand, and that’s more’n it’s 
worth to me. I don’t want the improvements.” 

Hollister generally meant what he said. 

“ I’ll think it over,” said Chadwick. 

He went back to the little flat over the drug store, 
where Dick and Chunie lived, and where Mrs. Chad- 
wick was beginning to smile again at the world, and to 
lose her strange look and strange way of speech. 

“ I’ll never take her back there.” He sat down and 
wrote a note to Hollister, saying that he would call it 
a bargain. 

And so Hollister took the place, and the notch in 
his great square of territory was filled up. 

“ Blessed if I’m going to pay taxes on that house,” 
he said. So it was torn down, and his stock-drovers 
carted off the lumber and made little cabins of it. 
The barn and the fences, too, were taken away, and if 
you go there now you will find nothing but a lonely 
row of eucalyptus trees to show that anybody ever lived 
there. The whole place has gone back into the wil- 
derness. It is a sight to delight the eye of a Californian 
Cleon. 

For this is the way that the Californian Cleons, with 
their motto of “ More land — more land,” are develop- 
ing the great valleys. 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


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4 



A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


Killing time was my employment then, and in that 
line I was a complete success. How relentlessly I 
grasped a fresh young day by the throat, and butchered 
it in cold blood at my leisure ! My favorite place of 
murder was in my bachelor’s apartments. They were 
in a big lodging-house — one of those great shells that, 
with their elaborate external shams, are so decoying to 
the lonely home-seeker. In there, among my cheap 
French novels, and with my hubble-bubble pipe — a 
genuine hookah — I slew the innocent hours, the guile- 
less days, and the helpless weeks. I was not always 
alone in my crimes. Sometimes I had confederates 
who were skillful assassins in this line, and who aided 
me in the wretched work. Among us we would make 
away with an afternoon and evening in short order. 
Our neatest and most effective work of this sort was 
done at the card-table, around which we would some- 
times sit until morning, when my friends would sneak 

stealthily down the stairs, feeling no little remorse at 

89 


90 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


limes over the reflection that they had murdered the 
very choicest and best of all the hours — those which 
should have been devoted to sleep. 

I do not know what might be urged in palliation for 
my friends’ offenses, but my excuse was, as I thought, 
a good and sufficient one, — I was waiting for the Great 
Event. This had solely to do with a silver mine, which 
is all I feel constrained to tell you about it. 

I knew few people in the house. The only man 
that I became well acquainted with among the lodgers 
was Silas Keith, and I had not known him long before 
I wished that I had not known him at all. Eerie is a 
good word for his style, and gruesome is a good word 
for his manner. He was white-faced, hollow-eyed, and 
his hair was the dryest-looking and his whiskers the 
spiniest that I ever set eyes upon. The first time I 
met him he was in his night-shirt. He tapped at my 
door and asked me what time it was. 

“ I saw by the transom that there was a light in your 
room,” said he, “ so you will excuse me for venturing 
to knock. One a. m., is it ? Why I thought it must 
be three. I forgot to wind my watch, and it is run 
down. Thank you. Good night, or rather, good 
morning.” 

“ Have you been ill } ” I asked, after I had told him 
not to be in a hurry about going, and had laid down 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


91 


my “ Sappho ” with her face to the table cover,— for I 
had been reading. His face looked very bad. 

“ O, no ; nothing unusual. I have been having an- 
other wrestling-bout with my old enemy, Insomnia ; 
that’s all. He is very hard to lay on his back some- 
times. No matter how early I may retire, it is often 
broad daylight before I can get to sleep. Are you 
ever troubled that way ? ” 

I lied a little for the sake of sympathy, saying that I, 
too, had a sleepless night now and then. But the 
fact of the matter is, that as soon as my head touches 
my pillow and my eyes close I enter the Land of Nod 
by the limited express. 

“ Then you know something of what I suffer. You 
know what it is to have all the prescribed formulas of 
sleep-producing, except the sedative, fail you. Now, I 
hate to resort to drugs. They leave me with less and 
less power against my enemy after each succeeding 
application. Of course you know that, still you can- 
not have the slightest conception of the torture I have 
eudured after all ; for I believe I have descended into 
the uttermost depths of the hell of the sleepless. I 
fear that drugs must in time become my only hope, 
and they are, as you know, a frail one. In vain have 
I tried many influences, the exertion of which I thought 
might withdraw my mind from the consciousness of its 


92 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


operations, and suspend the directing power of my 
will. I will not deny the fact that my restlessness is 
always dependent upon mental agitation and ex- 
treme nervousness. It generally is in cases such as 
mine,”. 

These confidences were not in my line. The next 
thing I knew he might be confessing some horrible 
crime to me. So I got rid of him, after asking if he 
had ever heard of strong cold tea as a cure for sleep- 
lessness. He said he had drank pints of it at a sitting, 
without the slightest noticeable good. As his long 
shirt trailed through the door, and he turned his caver- 
nous eyes toward me, and again bade me good-night in 
that thin voice of his, I knew I should have to read 
three more chapters of “ Sappho ” to get him and his 
confounded insomnia off my mind. By the time I had 
finished reading, it was three o’clock in the morning. 

I heard slight creaking sounds across the hallway, and 
knew they emanated from my new acquaintance’s bed- 
room. The sounds seemed like those of a person 
striding softly up and down the floor. I slept the sleep 
of the just, and woke not until nearly noon, when I , 
went abroad as usual, and on coming back and making 
an anxious inquiry for the letter that was to contain 
the eagerly awaited news of the Great Event, I received 
the usual reply and went on with my time-killing. It 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


93 


was getting to be slow work now, for I had nearly read 
myself out, and there was no prospect of a card-party 
of my chums until Saturday night, which was a long 
way off. 

The evening post brought nothing, but an express- 
man did manage to break the monotony with a good- 
sized bundle, which I eyed with curiosity. There was 
a note accompanying the package, and on opening it I 
was told in little Cousin May’s absurdly large chiro- 
graphy that this was my birthday, and that I had be- 
come the owner of a mandolin. Cousin May was always 
making people foolish gifts, bless her dear heart. The 
year before she had sent me a lot of little bags, scented 
with sachet powder. I unwrapped my mandolin and 
looked at it with'a smile. 

“ I have about as much use for this thing as a blind 
woman has for a looking-glass,” said I, for I knew not 
so much as a single note of music, not even a semi- 
quaver. So I put the mandolin on the mantel-piece, 
and turned to a fresh novel that I had brought home 
with me that day. I found in the first two chapters 
that the story was too tame for me, and so I lighted a 
cigar and sauntered out upon the street. At the cor- 
ner I fell in with my afflicted friend. 

“ I am taking a good walk to-night,” said he. “ Per- 
haps it will aid me in getting to sleep.” 


94 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


“ I hope it may,” said I, not very interestedly, and 
at the same time I thought, ‘ ‘ This man is getting to 
be a bore.” 

But he did not insist on walking with me, as I had 
thought he would. Still I was very far from being rid 
of him. He came again to my bedroom at midnight. 
This time he was more decently arrayed, but he had 
the same thin voice, the same awful eyes, and the same 
dry and uncanny beard and hair. He talked a long 
time, and as a result of his talk the most unlikely 
thing occurred. I actually became interested in 
the fellow and his everlasting insomnia. I can 
hardly account for it now, but he managed to impress 
me and so to gain my sympathy as to create in 
me a desire to help him. I knew that I was too 
selfish and indifferent to the woes of others to have 
this sort of feeling last long, and I wondered not a little 
at myself for harboring it at all. I went into his room 
with him, put him to bed, and selecting the stupidest 
book of all the mass of rot on my shelves, I read for 
an hour in the most monotonous tone at my command. 
It seemed that his evening walk had done him no 
earthly good, and he had been tossing about until he 
had nearly worn out his mattress. Now he lay quite 
calm. He was not asleep — that I could tell by his 
breathing, which was of the waking sort. I droned 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


95 


away in the most unimpressive manner, hoping to 
smooth down his auditory nerves, and cause his mind 
to yield itself to the soporific influence. I tired of this 
at the end of the hour. His eyes were closed, but the 
lids twitched in a horrible way. I saw on a shelf a 
well-thumbed volume, Macnish on “ The Philosophy 
of Sleep.” I opened it at page 21, and read that the 
mind while remaining poised, as it were, between 
sleep and its opposite condition, is “ pervaded by a 
strange confusion which almost amounts to wild 
delirium ; the ideas dissolve their connection with it 
one by one, and its own essence becomes so vague 
and diluted that it melts away in the nothingness of 
slumber. ” What an awful thing sleep was, after all ! 
It had never struck me in that light before. I read 
on and found a lot of sleep-producing experiments, 
which I proceeded to put to the test. Following the 
instructions, I began a soft tapping on the edge of the 
table, at the same time droning out a sort of see-saw 
melody, like unto nothing ever heard on the earth 
above, the waters beneath, or elsewhere. But the eye- 
lids kept up their infernal twitching and the breath 
got no deeper. Then I began a buzzing noise, curling 
my tongue and pressing it to my tightly-closed teeth. 
He turned his face to the wall, and soon I was 
rewarded by a heavy and regular breathing. I went 


96 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


away, still buzzing as I walked to the door, for fear 
that if I stopped he would wake and all my trouble 
would go for naught. 

He did not bother me for several days after that. 
On meeting him then I asked how he had slept that 
night. 

“ You worked so faithfully with me that I did not 
like to discourage you, so I assumed the state that 
you were trying so hard to force upon me.” 

“ Then you did not go to sleep after all ? ” 

“ No,” he replied sadly, vainly trying to smooth 
down his rebellious whiskers. 

I was disgusted. My first insomnia patient was 
evidently a very bad case — worse, indeed, than I had 
imagined. Well, what was he or his sleeplessness to 
me ? People had no right to force their maladies 
upon their neighbors, particularly in a boarding-house. 
I had come there to kill time, to be sure, but I wanted 
to choose my own way of doing it. 

For the next few days I was a thing of wild unrest. 
There was no card party, nor, in fact, any other kind 
of amusement that I cared for on the calendar, and the 
Great Event, though seemingly just at the point at 
times, actually refused to come off. 

One day, when particularly angry with the world, my 
eye fell upon the mandolin. I had been out a few 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


97 


evenings before at an entertainment where a man with 
gray hair had played the mandolin very sweetly, and 
he had told me that he had learned in two weeks. I 
had regarded that statement with proper suspicion, 
but now that I came to look at the instrument closely 
I saw that it was a simple affair after all. “ If I can 
get somebody to teach me to tune it and to twang it,” 
I thought, “ I can consume a little time fooling with 
the strings. I liked those ear-tickling notes very well 
the other night. Only two weeks’ practice. Of course 
the man lied.” 

I took the mandolin to a house on Sutter Street, 
where a modest sign announced that lessons were 
given on that instrument. A soft-eyed girl, with a lot 
of fluffy hair hanging over her forehead, gave me a 
lesson before I left the house. She applied a sort of 
Ollendorff system to her teaching, beginning with little 
runs that corresponded with the linguist’s “ Have you 
the bread ? ” and getting a little more complicated at 
each lesson. Well, I took a lesson every day, and I 
assure you that it was very pleasant, sitting there with 
that soft-eyed girl, while she taught my refractory fingers 
the way they should go. After a while I got so that I 
could touch the strings to some purpose, and I used to 
sit up late at night twanging away on gay fandangoes or 
soulful serenades. One warm evening I chanced to 
7 


98 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


leave my door open. For about an hour I played 
softly, then noticing that the door was ajar, I shut it, 
not caring to disturb the other lodgers. Next morn- 
ing the sleepless man across the hallway came to me 
in an ecstacy of delight. 

“ I was tossing on my pillow, last night,” said he, 
with radiant face, “ and had about despaired of sleep 
for the night, when, of a sudden, the music of your 
mandolin stole upon my nervous ear. The effect was 
magical. In less than ten minutes, as nearly as I can 
say, I was fast asleep.” 

This tickled me mightily. My little tricks with the 
mandolin were about my only accomplishment ; and if 
my music was so soft and sweet as he had said it was, 
it was certainly worth while to continue the practice. 
I told him I was glad if he had at last discovered an 
effective soporific that had no taste of morphine in it ; 
but that I was anything but a trained musician, and 
that he would doubtless soon become very tired of my 
twanging, if he were to hear it long. 

“ On the contrary,” he declared, “ I am so convinced 
of the soothing effect of your mandolin that I 
came in to ask as a favor that you would leave your 
door open every evening when you sit down to play 
upon it.” 

“Very well,” said I laughing, “but I leave you to 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


99 


settle with the other lodgers, who will surely begin to 
arm themselves, if I do as you wish.” 

“ Oh, I’ll stand all the blame, should there be any,” 
said he ; and he strode away with a lighter step than I 
had ever thought him capable of. 

Well, of course it was all very well for a time, and I 
was surprised and pleased to note the highly beneficial 
effect of the music on my friend across the way ; but 
how long could I keep it up ? Not for long, of course. 
He had gained several pounds of flesh, his face had 
regained its color, his step was elastic, and he declared 
that he was himself again, and that he owed it all to 
me and to my mandolin. So I thrummed away each 
night, until at last I became very sick of it all, and I 
vowed in my inhuman way, that I wished I had never 
seen a mandolin. 

As the music began to drop off, my friend became 
restive again. My indifference to his woes grew from 
day to day, and yet I often found myself, much against 
my will, playing the poor fellow to sleep. He was 
very grateful, and perhaps I ought to have continued 
to twang away and feel glad that I was of some use to 
somebody in the world. But, somehow, all the good 
feeling had worn off. Let me assure you right here, 
that it is one thing to play the mandolin to appre- 
ciative listeners in a hall or drawing-room, and an- 


lOO 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


other thing to sit and thrum away to put a man to 
sleep. 

I had become indispensable to the poor fellow, so 
he was saddled on me like the Old-Man-of-the-Sea. 
That was the worst of it all. I hardly had the heart 
to desert him, and yet I knew not which was the more 
unendurable, his insomnia or my enforced mandolin- 
playing. “ If I could only get a substitute,” thought 
I, “ I would be willing to pay for him out of my own 
purse.” 

But a substitute of the right sort was not so 
easy to find. I hired an Italian fellow from the 
Barbary Coast, and he stole everything he could 
easily make off with. Then the honest-looking man- 
dolinist from Tehama Street took occasion to get 
very much intoxicated in my room, and caused me 
to be regarded with suspicion by my landlady. It 
would not do. The thing was becoming an infernal 
nuisance. I must get rid of nervous Mr. Keith. Ah, 
happy thought ! Why not marry him to some woman 
who played the mandolin and who would be as willing 
to make sacrifices as I was unwilling ? I owed the 
man nothing, but still I hated to desert him. Whom 
could I marry him off to ? It was a serious question. 
In the first place, I doubted if he would be acceptable 
to any woman, if she knew of his malady. But she 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


lOI 


need not be told. After she married him she might 
take her time curing him, and it might not take so very 
long, after all. He seemed to be getting much better, 
and in time he might not require the mandolin treat- 
ment. If she really loved him she would certainly be 
willing to exert a little patience. Keith was a man of 
means, and he was not a bad matrimonial bargain, 
leaving aside his unnatural tendency toward sleepless- 
ness. I might advertise him in the personal columns, 
and perhaps some willing widow would snatch him up 
in short order. “A wide-awake man would like to 
correspond with a young woman of affectionate disposi- 
tion, with a view to matrimony.” How would that 
look ? But, pshaw ! How did I know that he would 
entertain the notion of marrying ? The best way was 
to take him unaware. Eureka ! There was that soft- 
eyed girl on Sutter Street. I would introduce them, 
and he might fall in love with her. That was the best 
plan I could devise. 

Full of my great matrimonial project, I grasped the 
first opportunity to put it into working order. I took 
Keith with me to the soft-eyed girl, on some pretense 
or other, and he became interested in her at their first 
meeting. 

“ What a lucky stroke,” thought I. And yet, some- 
how, I was not altogether pleased when on my next 


102 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


meeting with the trim little mandolin teacher she re- 
marked that Mr. Keith was one of the most entertain- 
ing men she had ever met. 

Why I was not pleased I did not understand. Yet 
I remember quite distinctly that I ground my heel into 
the gravel walk and changed the subject. Whatever 
the feeling was, it seemed to have disappeared next 
day, for I managed to arrange another meeting of the 
two. It was not long before they became good friends, 
and it soon looked as if they might become something 
more. She entranced him with her sweet strains from 
the mandolin. “ It will not be long,” thought I, “ be- 
fore my struggle with insomnia will be over. It has 
been almost as bad as though I were afflicted with the 
dread malady myself.” 

Just at this time the Great Event bobbed up on the 
horizon as an absolute certainty. I had been at one 
stroke, as it seemed, lifted above cheap boarding- 
houses, and all that they implied, and was now ready 
for a career in the financial arena such as I had long 
pictured to myself as the ideal life for a moneyed man. 
By making a few lucky moves among the chessmen on 
the Stock Exchange, I could retire in a year or two, if I 
chose, or I could keep on at the game until I should 
amass a fortune of which a Vanderbilt might not feel 
ashamed. 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


103 


My first few sallies among the bulls and bears did 
not make me a millionaire. In fact, they threatened 
to drive me to hard labor or strong drink. One night, 
after a particularly rough time of it among the animals 
of the Exchange, I went home, feeling more blue than 
blue. I picked up the mandolin and opened my door. 
^^No matter how down on my luck I may feel,” thought 
I, “ I will lull that poor Keith to sleep. He is in, of 
course. He is always in. So I will give him ‘ Old 
Madrid,’ and send him off.” 

When I had finished playing, I went out upon the 
street. Glancing at a tower clock near by, I was sur- 
prised to find that it was still early. Somehow my 
steps took me toward Sutter Street. On the way an- 
other blue wave swept over me. It had been an in- 
fernally rough day. Had those bears burned brim- 
stone under me they could not have made me feel with 
any keener appreciation the fact that the devil’s chosen 
haunt was not far away from their pit. Well, I had 
still a snug little fortune left out of the wreck. Per- 
haps the thing to do now was to let the bears have 
their old pit all to themselves. 

Just as I reached the soft-eyed girl’s gate, to which 
I turned with a feeling of flight from the bad old world 
that had been giving me such hard knocks, I saw two 
figures coming down the walk. Revealed by the gas- 


04 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 


light, their faces turned out to be the hairy one of 
Keith, whom I had so religiously put to sleep, as I 
thought, a half-hour before, and the round, peachy one 
of the soft-eyed girl. I shrank into the shadow, and 
as they passed I heard him speak to her in a tone 
of voice that was so tender that it caused her eye- 
lids to droop and made me feel like knocking him 
down. 

They walked away up the street. I hung around the 
house until they returned, and it was the worst half- 
hour of my whole life, that spent waiting for them to 
come back. I did not let them see me, of course, but 
I had altogether too good a view of them from across 
the street. They lingered in the doorway and talked 
and talked, until I became firmly convinced that some- 
thing ought to be done. Just when I was at the point 
of doing that something and rendering myself still 
more, ridiculous than I had yet done, he tore himself 
away. 

I did not thrum on the mandolin the next night, you 
may be sure. I went, instead, to the house on Sutter 
Street. And the next night, and the next. 

It was out of the question — was it not ? — that she 
should marry such a man as he ? Why, he cannot 
sleep a wink unless some one plays the mandolin for 
him or doses him with morphine. What a husband he 


A STRUGGLE WITH INSOMNIA. 105 

would have been for her ! I am mean enough to re- 
flect that there are plenty of other mandolin players in 
the State of California, from which he may choose. 

Of course I pity him. I can afford to now. For the 
soft-eyed girl is mine. 




9 


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THE “ BAR L” BRAND. 








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THE “BAR BRAND. 


The average cowboy (said Jim) is not beautiful. 
We were most of us raw-boned, ugly ducks at Lucin’s 
and rough enough and tough enough, too. There 
wasn’t another camp in all the south of Utah where 
you could find men hairier, horsier or harder-look- 
ing. The raw wind and the fine dust of the desert, 
with the creosote stuff they called whisky, and the 
hard bacon and the saddle jolts brought out our 
cheekbones and spoiled us for the beauty gallery. 

But that boy Tappan — he was just too pretty to live. 
Never seemed to know it, to be sure, but it worked 
against him. If he went into the boss’ saloon to get 
a drink and there were any strangers there, they’d all 
set down their glasses to look at him. I can’t tell, of 
course, how he’d have struck you, but I know when I 
first looked at him he just took my breath away with 
those steel-blue eyes of his, that fine nose and that 
clear skin. 

109 


no 


THE BAR Z” BRAND. 


Lucin’s was the wrong place for Brush Tappan, and 
it was particularly wrong when Millie Hessop struck 
the camp. She came from Salt Lake in the fall of the 
year to cook for old Hessop, who claimed to be her 
father. Of course the boys put more oil on their hair 
and on their boots and made their saddles look cleaner 
and brighter and all that. But she didn’t seem to 
look at any of them for awhile — just kept that pretty 
face of hers behind the scrim curtains she’d stuck in 
the four windows of old Hessop’s shack. 

I don’t suppose Brush had the slightest notion there 
were any strings on her when she came there. How 
could he tell } Never’d seen her before. So he got 
friendly all at once. He used to help her wash the 
old man’s dishes, and I’ve seen him setting the table 
for her and making johnny-cake in the old man’s 
kitchen. But nobody thought anything strange of that. 
It was our way. There wasn’t a man in camp that 
couldn’t make flapjacks and fry bacon as good as any 
woman you ever saw, and as for helping Mill Hessop 
— why, any one of us would have walked forty miles 
through the sage-brush, had she said the word. 

But when I think of it I can see that Brush hadn’t 
any business there. If a man wants to get along with 
the boss, keep his cayuse fed up and not lose any 
steers, he don’t want to have much truck with women. 


THE BAR Z” BRAND. 


Ill 


Still Brush meant well, and, as I said, he didn’t 
know there were any strings on Mill — that is, that 
anybody else had got his brand on her. She was as 
full-cheeked and dark-eyed a Mormon giil as ever I 
saw. Came from Georgia or somewhere South, and I 
was told her brothers were all killed in the war. How 
the Saints got hold of so many Southern people I 
could never tell, and she was as spirited a Southron 
and as hard-bitted as a four-year-old broncho. It 
must have been the old man’s fault that she went with 
the Mormons. 

You could see that she was taken with Brush. There 
wasn’t any man in the camp excepting him that she’d 
pay any attention to. His was a very bad case, too. 
Talk about a lovesick young saphead, I think he was 
the worst I ever laid eyes on. 

Things might have been all different if the old man 
himself hadn’t taken such a shine to Brush. It was 
plain enough that he thought a whole lot of the boy, 
and you couldn’t have blamed him for it, either, for 
the young fellow was of that sort that takes everybody, 
and I don’t believe, really, that he had an enemy in 
the whole camp. 

I guess I was about the hardest on Brush, for I used 
to make a lot of fun of him about the piece of calico 
that looked so well to him. For the truth of the 


II2 


THE “ BAR L ” BRAHE. 


matter was, I knew that she’d be a whole corral full of 
trouble for him before he got through. 

I made him fighting mad two or three times by my 
remarks on the subject, and once when I was trying to 
tell him that she wasn’t the sort of girl for him at all, 
being a Mormon, he made a reach toward his hip 
pocket. But I guess he saw something in my eye that 
made him lose his wrath, for it didn’t go any further. 
He knew well enough, of course, that I was the best 
friend he had in the v/orld, and that I meant well, 
though I had a mean way of putting it. 

Then the boss took a hand in the game; You see, 
I told Lucin how it was, and that he stood to lose 
one of his best men, all on account of the Hessop 
calico. 

“ That’s fixed easy ’nough,” said he. “ I’ll ’tend to 
that.” 

And the next thing I heard was that Brush had left 
for the Cow Creek range, fifty miles north, to hunt up 
some of Lucin’s stock. I know the boy hated to leave, 
but then he couldn’t quarrel with his bread and butter, 
and Lucin wasn’t a man that you could fool with very 
much. 

The stage that runs over from Red Butte twice a 
week brought a passenger, to camp the next night after 
Brush left. He was rather a stout man, with a red 


THE “ BAR L ” BRAND. 


1 13 

face, and the biggest, knottiest, ugliest hands I ever 
saw. 

“ Where’s old Hessop’s house ? ” was his first ques- 
tion, and the voice sounded like the pounding of a 
broncho’s hoof on a barn floor — it was just that blunt 
and heavy. One of the boys showed him the house 
and he went straight there, walking in without knock- 
ing just as if he owned the place and everybody in it. 
As it so turned out, he did own somebody in it, and 
who should that be but Mill. Yes, it was known the 
next day — for the new man blurted it out over Lucin’s 
bar — that he had his brand on Mill Hess.op. They’d 
been engaged a whole year, and everybody up at Salt 
Lake knew it. 

Don’t you know, when I heard that thud-voiced 
fellow knock out those words, I felt just like going 
right out and — well, it just collapsed me ; that’s what 
it did. Here was Brush making up to the only girl in 
the camp in first-class style, and she was willing, and 
what’s more, anxious, and then to have a chromo like 
that come along with such a tale. I was completely 
floored. 

“ Here’s to Mill Hessop, my wife that’s to be,” I 
heard the man pound out from his hard lips. “ Come 
up, boys, all on ye, and take a drink.” And he did 

this several times. 

8 


THE ^^BAR Z” BRAND. 


I14 

Of course this sort of thing made Steve Menzies — 
that was his name — quite popular all of a sudden 
with the boys, and particularly with Lucin. But it 
wasn’t so much the liquor he bought that made the 
boss smile ; it was the feeling that he’d got rid of the 
trouble over Mill Hessop and Brush Tappan. 

“ This’ll teach the young fellow a lesson,” whispered 
the boss to me. “ He’ll know enough not to go fooling 
around there any more.” And he let his one eye 
glance in the direction of the Hessop house. 

Somehow it didn’t just strike me that way. I must 
have felt in my bones that the “trouble,” as Lucin 
called it, was only just begun. 

Of course. Brush couldn’t keep away from the camp 
over Sunday. He rode in the worsTbeat broncho I 
ever saw, that afternoon, and explained his rush by 
saying he’d had some Ute bullets to dodge on the 
way over. I didn’t take any stock in that story, es- 
pecially as it wasn’t ten minutes after he’d struck the 
camp before he’d headed toward Hessop’s. He wasn’t 
gone very long before he came back to the boss’ place 
looking like a man who had just seen a big railroad 
accident, or something of that kind. He didn’t seem 
to have nerve enough left to tell me what had hap- 
pened, but I hit it off first shot. He’d found Steve 
Menzies there, showing how sweet he was on Mill. 


THE BAR L ” BRAND. 


“5 


It broke the boy all up — never saw anything like it. 
He was just simply gone, and there didn’t seem to be 
any help for him. 

He moped around for days and days, and didn’t 
take any interest in anything. She was changed, too, 
for she didn’t stick her head out of doors, and hadn’t 
anything particular to say to anybody that called 
around. 

I made it my business to go to Mill on the fifth day, 
and I don’t mind saying that I went there to give her 
a good raking over. She was whiter than I had ever 
seen her, and when she stuck out that clean little hand 
of hers to take my big grimy one, it sort of softened 
me, though I was still mad to think what she had done 
for the boy — my best friend in all the world. 

It was quite a while before I could say anything, and 
when I did it was something foolish. 

“ You haven’t acted on the square, Millie,” I bungled 
out. “ If you had you’d have told Brush in the first 
place just how the land lay. If another man had got 
the first call, you ought to have warned him away. It 
wasn’t square.” 

“ I know it,” said she, “ I — I ,” and she threw her 

head down on the table, and her shoulders moved in 
a way that took all the starch out of me. I can brain 
a calf or take a shot at a man without any feeling, but 


THE “ BAR L ” BRAND. 


1 16 

when it comes to seeing a woman in tears, and such a 
woman as Mill Hessop — well, it just beats me. 

I ranged all through my stock of comforting words 
to get a rope on something I could say to her, but all 
I could think of was, “ It’s too blamed bad.” When 
I had said that about six times, she lifted her head and 
said : 

“ Well, I don’t know anything I can do. It’s got to 
go on just as it commenced, and that’s all there is to 
it, though I am very — very ” 

Very what I never learned, for the old man came in, 
and she slipped out into the next room. 

The whole three of them — Hessop and Mill and 
Steve — were to start for Salt Lake on Sunday, and 
that was to be the end of them so far as Lucin’s was 
concerned, but somehow or other they didn’t get started, 
and we heard Mill had refused to go. When Brush 
heard this he picked up courage a little, and actually 
went to Hessop’s three times the next day. 

“That means shooting,” said everybody in the 
camp. 

As the time slipped by and Mill didn’t go, — though 
she was pulled and hauled by Steve and the old man 
for all they were worth, — Brush’s handsome face began 
to look as bright as a new Mexican bit, while Steve’s 
grew blacker and uglier than was necessary. 


THE “ BAR L ” BRAND, 


117 

And then came the affair of the corral, which I never 
did fully understand, but which, Fll tell you about as 
far as I know. 

You see, we were rounding up stock and putting on 
the brands and ear-marks. Lucin needed all the help 
he could get and so he rung Steve in on the job, though 
the fellow was all- fired anxious to get away and take 
the girl along with him. 

It was toward evening and the last steer had been 
thrown and branded. Nearly everybody had left the 
corral, and I had gone along with the rest, when I 
happened to think of the old coat I’d left down on the 
fence and went back to get it. 

Well, I got the coat and was just turning away, 
when I happened to glance through the fence and saw 
Steve there poking the branding iron — the big Bar L, 
that Lucin always put on his stock — into the fire. I 
couldn’t think what he could be doing with the brand, 
but I noticed that he was acting mighty strange and 
that his face twitched, while it lighted up with an un- 
godly smile. The fire didn’t burn very well, and he 
seemed to be in a wonderful hurry to make it hotter, 
for he fussed around and poked and stirred and piled 
on sticks. At last it blazed up right brisk and it 
wasn’t very long before he pulled the iron out a cherry 
red. Then he ran over to a corner and I made out in 


THE » BAR L ’ BA RATH 


Ii8 

the half-light that there was somebody else there, too. 
I went along, outside the fence, a little nearer and saw 
that it was a man tied to a post with a riata and that 
the man was Brush Tappan. 

That was enough for me. I got over that fence just 
about as lively as a man ever put himself on the right 
side of ten rails, and legged it toward the impish Steve. 
But I was too far away to do any good, and that six- 
shooter of mine was just where a careless vacquero 
like me is likely to leave it — up in the shack. I could 
hear the devilish hound pant out as he rushed up to 
Brush : 

“ ‘ L’ for lovely, eh ? I’ll put it where it’ll do the 
most good — right on that pretty face of yours, my 
boy.” 

He went a little nearer and I heard him say : 

“ Oh, it’s hot enough, never fear — it’ll make two good 
marks, one on each side.” 

He raised the iron and I could see poor Brush throw 
his head back as far as he could and make a hard fight 
with the riata to get loose. The iron was stuck within 
two inches of the boy’s face, and I was half the length 
of the corral away. I yelled and was just going to 
turn my head to keep off a sight that I didn’t want to 
see, when I heard a pop and saw a flash from between 
the rails on the side nearest to Brush. Down tumbled 


THE » BAR L ” BRAHE. 


II9 

Mr. Steve and there he squirmed in the dust for about 
half a minute, and then lay as still as if he’d been dead 
a month. 

I cut the riata and helped the boy home, for he was 
pretty well used up in the struggle he’d had. We 
didn’t ask each other any questions about who fired 
that shot. Both of us knew that the little tracks in 
the dust just outside the corral weren’t those of any 
man. And we kept still about it. 

Brush and Mill both wanted to get away as soon as 
they could after that. The wedding was a very quiet 
affair. I think I was the only guest present. But 
there wasn’t very much room, anyway, in that little 
office of Justice Drew, over at Nephi, where I drove 
them that night in my buckboard buggy. 






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’LISH, OF ALKALI FLAT. 


A CLUMP of scraggly cacti grew against the shack, 
and scratched its unpainted side when the wind blew 
hard. But it was not blowing at all now, and the same 
heat that throbbed over the desert and warped the 
sky-line was curling the shakes atop the shack and 
sending every breathing thing on Alkali Flat, even to 
the lizards, into the shade. 

There were just three rooms in the shack, and ’Lish’s 
was the end one, next to the kitchen. The little house 
was closed as tight as a drum to keep in whatever of 
the night’s coolness remained in it, which was little 
enough. 

’Lish — the whole of it was Alicia — sat in her room, 
and talked with her mother, who was peeling potatoes 
in the kitchen. Although in separate rooms, their 
sharp, Missourian voices were clear enough to each 
other. There was just one thing to talk about, and 

nearly everything on earth that could be said about it 

123 


124 


^LISH, OF ALKALI FLAT. 


had been said, so they had been going over it all 
again. It was pap’s big strike. 

“ It ain’t dead sure, ye know, ’Lish,” wound up the 
mother ; “ but it looks as near like it as one jack-rabbit 
looks like ernother.” 

“ or pap’s workin’ awful hard, ain’t he, maw ? ” 

“ I reckon he is.” 

’Lish looked out through the small window. Her 
glance shot past the two rails that glimmered under 
the angry sun, down there by Alkali Flat Station, past 
the two scurrying dust demons that showed there was 
air in motion somewhere, even though sporadically, 
and away over to the blue buttes. There was a notch 
in the far butte — Scrub Canon, they called it. Pap 
was working there in that notch, under that awful sun, 
in the restless way that pap always worked. He was 
there alone, digging his pick into the dry ground and 
scanning each clod and broken rock for the yellow 
specks that meant so much to him, and that were to 
put something better than a shake roof over their 
heads. 

She felt for him that horrible heat ; she saw the drops 
of sweat trickle from his brow and plash upon the rocks, 
making their dark mark there for an instant and drying 
up in another ; she felt, as she put it, “ the spring 
goin’ out of her,” just as it was going out of “ ol’ pap.” 


'LISH, OF ALKALI FLAT, 


125 


“ But he wouldn’t let me help him — never would, 
even ef he was a-workin’ his two ban’s off,” she sighed. 

Then she went and set the table for dinner. They 
ate in silence, ’Lish and “maw.” There was no 
good talking it all over again. It would not do to 
count too much on it, anyway. Other strikes had been 
in promise, year after year, and nothing had come of 
them, absolutely nothing. 

The afternoon wore on. The glare had gone out of 
the day. They opened the house to let in the growing 
coolness outside, watching for “ ol’ pap’s ” dust mean- 
time, and wondering what news he would bring. He 
was late ; but he had been late before. They sat on 
the doorstep and glued their eyes to the notch in the 
butte, which had begun to blur as the sun had gone 
to make an oven of some other part of the world. 

“ There he comes,” ’Lish would say ; but it was only 
a dust demon trying to trick them. 

And so the night grew on ; but the full horn of an 
early moon shone down, and still they watched. 

“ Guess I’d better go over an’ see ef I kain’t raise 
him,” said ’Lish. “ An’ ef he’s a-goin’ ter stay out all 
night, he’ll need a blanket. I’ll take him one, an’ come 
back with the news, whatever it is. Git the blanket 
out, maw, an’ I’ll go an’ buckle the sheepskin onto Ol’ 
Jim.” 


126 


'LISH, OF ALKALI FLA T 


The desert night told its secrets to the girl as she 
rode the slow mustang over the trail to the buttes. 
And the desert night holds many secrets for those who 
care to hear them ; but it did not whisper the darkest 
of them to ’Lish that night. The air came warm and 
then chill, as she passed through the different strata 
that were from low, hot plain or frigid mountain-top. 
Old Jim was so slbw. He minded no more the flicks 
from the strap-end than he did the brushing of the 
greasewood past his lean form. He did make a plunge 
now and then ; but that was when a cactus-spine 
pricked his side. 

At last the girl reached the canon, which seemed to 
be done in black and white, so light did the moon 
make the exposed parts, and so inky were the shadows. 
It was frightfully quiet in there. As she went along, 
she heard the whinny of her father’s horse, tethered 
beside the wall of rock. She left Old Jim to munch 
the mesquite near by, while she tripped up a steep 
trail, and came to the gash her father had made with 
pick and shovel in the lone canon-side. 

There he was, sitting on the ground and leaning 
against a rock. The moon shone upon his patched 
overalls and upon his dusty shirt ; but she could not 
see his face, for his head was bent forward and was 
hidden by the brim of his slouch hat. 


^LISH, OF ALKALI FLAT. 


127 


“ Pap,” her sharp voice stabbed the quiet, “ I came 
up ter see ef you was ever cornin’ home. I brung a 
blanket, pap, case yer wanted to stay all night. You 
oughter ’a’ come home hours and hours ago, ’stead o’ 
workin’ an’ workin’ till you was all fagged out.” 

He did not lift his head. A puff of cold wind came 
down the canon, and, striking the girl’s breast, made 
her shiver. 

“ Sleepin’ on the rocks. Wal, I swun ! Tuk too 
much outen the black bottle, I’ll bet.” 

She stepped nearer. 

“ Hullo, pap ! You ain’t drunk agin, be you ? Pap, 
pap. I’m clean ’shamed o’ you ! ” 

She leaped to the rock, gave him a dig in the side 
of his leg with her stoutly leathered toe, and then 
shook his shoulder. 

“ Pap, wake up ! You’ll catch yer death a-cold, 
sleepin’ out this way. An’ here we’ve be’n a-watchin’ 
out fer ye, an’ watchin’ till our eyes was most give 
out, while you’ve be’n up here havin’ a good ol’ 
guzzlin’ time, all by yerself, an’ not carin’ a cuss. It’s 
playin’ us darned mean, pap, an’ you know it.” 

She shook his shoulder again. His head fell back. 
The face was chalky white. 

“ God, Pap ! What is it ? ” 

She felt his face. It was stone cold. The touch 


128 


^LISH, OF ALKALI FLAT. 


froze her. She felt his heart. The throb was gone 
out of it. 

“ Pap, pap ! ” and all the canon heard her sharp, 
desolate cry ; “ my ol’ pap ! He ain’t dead ? ” 

A big lizard went scattering down the slope, an owl 
in a scrub-oak near by gave a dismal hoot, and the 
coyotes set up their throaty yelps. 

She gulped and gasped. Her breath seemed cut 
off. She would have fallen at his side, but that her 
ear caught the coyotes’ yelps and caught, too, their 
horrible meaning. She stayed herself by her two 
hands against the rock and tried to get her breath. 
The coyotes yelped again, in awful chorus, and she 
shuddered. 

“ They shan’t get you, pap ; they shan’t get you. 
I’ll take you home.” 

Her breath came free as she spoke. She grasped 
the dead man’s shoulders, and, keeping as much of 
his body from the ground as she could, she dragged 
him down the rocky trail, toward the spot where the 
horses were tethered. She winced when she heard 
his boot-heels scratch the ground, but she pulled and 
tugged with all her might, and, panting, she laid his 
form near Old Jim, who snorted and jumped and 
pricked up his ears. Then, with a glance backward 
from time to time, she went to her father’s little camp. 


^LISH, OF ALKALI FLAT. 


29 


took his axe, and cut two poles, with which she made 
a “dust-trailer,” the poles being bound to Old Jim’s 
sides like shafts, with pieces of strap and bale-rope. 
She lifted the body again, to put it on the rude con- 
veyance. The moon struck it full this time, and, as 
she rolled it over gently upon the trailer, she saw a big 
clot of blood on the back of the dark shirt, and by it 
was a clean-cut bullet-hole. With a shudder, she let 
the body fall. Then she looked at her hands. There 
was blood upon them and upon the sleeve of her 
dress. 

“ Claim-jumpers ! ” 

She set her teeth hard when she thrust forth the 
words, and clinched her hand till the nails dug into 
the palm. 

They had killed him, then, while he was at work. 
He had crawled as far as the rock and had died. It 
was a strike — a big one — and it had cost him his life. 
But 

She looked up the canon with awful eyes, and smote 
the air with the clinched hand. 

Then she bent down, and, taking a long halter-strap, 
fastened the body securely to the top of the trailer, and, 
mounting her father’s horse, she led Old Jim carefully 
down the canon and out upon the night-chilled plain. 
The coyotes followed her, and almost rent her heart 
9 


130 


'LISH, OF ALKALI FLAT. 


by their cries, but she kept on, and before midnight 
the sad little procession reached the cabin. The 
mother was still up, and she ran to the door when she 
heard the sound of the hoofs. 

“ Is that you, ’Lish } ” she called out. “ Did ye 
bring pap home ? Is it a dead-sure strike ? ” 

’Lish slid from her horse, and ran to the door. 

“ Maw, Maw, Maw ! ” was her cry. “ Maw, they’ve 
killed him ! They’ve killed poor old pap ! ” 


It was a month after they had laid the old man 
in the white earth, and the wind was whispering 
through the sage-brush and scattering its gray leaves 
on his grave. 

’Lish was up in the canon, behind the very rock 
where she had found her dead father. The canon 
draught was grateful to her after the hard ride over the 
heated plain. She drank in long breaths of it, but all 
the time her eye was on the hole where her father had 
made the one great strike of his life and had died for 
it. 

“ Strange he never comes ’roun’ — that greasy-faced 
Jos6 Garcia. ’Twas him that did it. P’raps he’s 
waitin’ fer us to move away. He’ll wait a long time — 
till he’s dead.” 


'LISH, OF ALKALI FLA T. 


131 

She let her glance fall for an instant to the some- 
thing that gleamed along the top of the rock. That 
something was the barrel of her father’s rifle. The 
wind rustled a snake-skin on the rock at her side, and 
a “ swift ” darted into the shade and looked at her 
with unwinking eyes. 

Then a dark, squat figure stole out of the canon 
depths and up to the mine. The girl did not start, but 
a smile passed her lips. The figure moved about as 
silently as a shadow. It turned a swart face toward 
the spot where she lay hid, but there was more of 
interest for it in the hole in the canon-side than for 
aught else, and on this the eyes were bent. 

By moving the muzzle of the rifle two inches along 
the top of the rock, it covered the flap of the pocket 
in the left breast of the blue-flannel shirt. 

“ Farther than I thought for,” the girl said to herself 
— “ nearly a hundred and fifty yards. The middle 
sight’s the best.” 

She squinted through the pin-point hole, and lower- 
ing the muzzle the smallest fraction of an inch, she 
smiled as the small round dot of light rested on the 
very centre of the pocket-flap. At that instant a dark 
shadow made an inky patch on the scarp near her, and 
looking up she saw a big buzzard wheeling in the air. 
She smiled again, and hugged the rifle-butt, which 


132 


'LISH, OF ALKALI FLAT. 


fitted closely against her shoulder. Her right hand 
went forward a little. Her slender forefinger, held 
straight, smoothed the black trigger lightly, almost lov- 
ingly. The man straightened up a little. The finger 
crooked, there was a sharp crack, and the man fell 
upon his face. 

Then she pressed home another cartridge and clam- 
bered up the rock, rifle in hand. She leaned over the 
body. It was motionless. 

“ You oughter ’a’ ben shot in the back, too,” she 
said, grimly; “but ’Lish ain’t no greaser.” 

She moved away, with light step, hugging the rifle 
under her arm. And the buzzard circled a little lower. 


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HORSE-IN-THE-WATER. 


Never an Apache howled as Horse-in- the-Water 
howled when the rattlesnake struck him on the hand 
that July afternoon. Horse-in-the- Water had been 
lying asleep in the shade of a big rock. The shadow 
had shifted until it had left his face, and the sun had 
beaten down with such furnace-like heat that it had of 
a sudden aroused him. Still half asleep, he drew him- 
self closer up to the rock, gave a sleepy grunt of satis- 
faction when he felt the coolness of the shadow upon 
his head, and threw his left hand lazily back until it 
fell with a flop on the sand. 

“ R-z-z-z-z ! ” came the warning, and the stroke of 
the sharp fangs followed all too soon. 

On the ears of Horse-in-the- Water the rattle sounded 
as if it came from far away, but it was only for an in- 
stant that his waking brain hugged the thought that 
the stab in the hand was caused by a cactus spine, 
for the rattle echoed backward, as it seemed, and he 
caught the ugly tune of it and knew what had hap- 

135 


136 


HORSE-IN- THE- WA TER. 


pened. He sprang up too quickly for the snake to get 
in his second stroke. His knife ! He could cut out 
the poisoned spot and breathe the free air of the desert 
for many a long year yet. He looked closely at the 
wound. The two little blue punctures were directly 
over the vein, and the poison was creeping through 
his blood. The knife was useless ! 

Horse-in-the-Water glanced quickly up and down 
over the desert. No one was in sight. The solemn 
giant cacti held up their arms in derision, the little 
“ swifts ” darted through the greasewood, and far off 
he heard the cry of a coyote. He was alone — help- 
less. He danced in his wild rage ; he tore his long 
bushy hair ; his black eyes flashed fire and he twisted 
his sharp face into devilish shapes. He eyed the 
serpent, still darting its tongue of flame from the cen- 
ter of its Q-shaped coil. He stuck the muzzle of his 
rifle within a foot of the three-cornered head, and 
touching the trigger, blew it from the stumpy, root-like 
body. Then, in a fever of rage, in which there was 
mixed a keen delight, he seized the writhing coil, and, 
cutting it into little bits with his sharp blade, he threw 
the gory pieces to the four winds. 

Then he was ready to die. Not ready, either ; for 
as his eye ran over the desert he appreciated, for the 
first time in his life, the wild freedom of nature. The 


HORSE-IN- THE- WA TER. 


137 


warm wind blew softly by him. The young owls ran 
along the ground. The wee lizards darted into the 
cracks of the rock. A coyote slunk away behind a 
clump of prickly-pears. He was warm and lusty now, 
and in an hour or so he would be as dead as the grease- 
wood twigs that snapped beneath his feet, as he paced 
up and down like a caged bear. He hugged the life 
that was in him, and he could not bear the thought of 
losing it. No, he was not ready to die. The wild 
man of the plain does not face death with that stoical 
indifference given him by the clever magazine writers. 
He is as likely to make a great fuss over it as 
any white man. So, as I said, Horse-in-the-Water 
howled. 

It was good for him that he howled. For the sound 
of distress brought Old Sol Sunderland two hundred 
yards out of his way, as he slowly rode his mustang 
over the desert, and when he had rounded a rocky, 
cactus-sprinkled hillock, he came within sight of the 
Apache. Quickly the Indian ran to the white man 
and begged him for whisky. He told him how near 
to death he was, and when he held out his swollen 
arm, Sunderland could not withhold the big flask which 
he carried in his coat pocket. Unstrapping the coat 
from the back of his saddle, he took out the flask and 
dosed the red man liberally with the fiery liquid. 


HORSE-IN-THE- WA TER, 


“ Pizen agin pizen,” said the old man. “ This stuff 
’ll knock out anything from a horned toad to a Gila 
monster. It’s pure t’rantler jooce, mixed with blue 
vitr’ol. It’s damned good. Givin’ it to a ’Pachy is 
throwin’ it away, but I can’t see any critter dyin’ alone 
on the desert — not even a pack-burro. Take ernother 
dose, Injun.” 

“ Yell, him heap good,” said the Horse-in-the-Water, 
as his eyes began to roll languidly from the effect of 
the heavy swigs he was taking. “ Dam’ good ! ” 

Then he sat down on a rock, his head hanging low. 
Soon he rolled over on the burning sand, his naked 
flesh never flinching from the contact. His turban- 
like panuelo^ that had been twisted about his brow, 
fluttered to the ground. Sunderland picked it up and 
spread it over the Apache’s face. 

“ ’Spose I’ll hev ter stay an’ see this ere show out,” 
he said. “ But it’ll make me late home.” 

He shook the flask. Not a drop of liquor was there 
left in it. 

“ It’s goin’ ter be a dam’ dry watch,” he said, “ an’ 
I don’t know erbout it.” 

The sun shot down its blinding rays, and the old 
man shook his head. “ Guess I’ll take the critter home 
with me,” he sighed. 

He lifted the heavy form upon his mustang, tied it 


HORSE-IN- THE- WA TER. 


139 


on, somehow or other, with his riata, and led the 
animal back to the trail. 

“ Glad I ain’t got mor’n five mile ter go. Wonder 
how many men ’round these ’ere parts would do this 
fur a ’Pachy. Mighty few, I guess. That’s what it is 
to be so blamed chicken-hearted. I mighter ben 
somethin’ of a man, hed I ben built the other way. 
Tough luck, though, fur any critter, white er red, ter 
die that way.” 

He glanced at the Apache. He did not look very 
comfortable or very pretty, hanging there in the saddle. 
He was doubled up, his naked brown legs were wob- 
bling about on the mustang’s sides, his head was 
hanging down, and the straggling mass of uneven hair 
was waving and fluttering as he bobbed up and down. 

Fiercer than ever did the sun’s bolts stab the desert. 
There seemed to be fire in the air. More than once 
did Sunderland pass his hand to his forehead as he 
walked along. The blinding light was reflected upon 
the white earth, and the heat waves danced before his 
eyes. 

“ Dunno if this ere good Samaritan business is jest 
the thing fur the desert,” he said, “ but I’ll stick it 
out, an’ I s’pose my reward will come some time er 
other.” 

It was with a gasp of relief that he deposited the 


140 


HORSE-IN- THE- WA TER. 


heavily breathing Horse-in-the-Water in the shade of 
the fence of his little corral, not far from the cabin 
which he called home. 

“ ril send Phil down ter look arter him ’fore dark,” 
he said, as he went on homeward. 

Phil was his son — a young man of nineteen, who 
lived with him in the little hovel when he was not over 
in the mountain meadows, herding the cattle with the 
other cowboys, or rounding them up down at the big 
railroad corral forty miles away. The cowboy had 
fried the bacon, dished out the beans, cut the bread 
and. opened a can of yellow peaches, and was awaiting 
the return of his father to share with him the evening 
meal. He had grown impatient at his delay. Keep- 
ing fried bacon warm means to curl it up and make it 
crisp and unsavory, and he told his father so, when he 
finally appeared, hot and dusty, and with an appetite 
that threatened to carry all before it. 

“ But I count a good deal on the peaches to take the 
dryness off the meal,” said he. “ There’s nothing like 
them.” 

“ You’re kinder like Si Hendrick, over ter Drywash,” 
remarked the father. “ He told me, t’other day, that 
his idee of heaven was a place where thar was plenty 
o’ canned truck.” 

“Not a bad sort of heaven, either,” said the young 


HORSE-JN- THE- WA TER. 


141 

man, “but what’s that you said about the snake-bitten 
Indian ? ” 

“ Oh, he was a-howling like mad down thar near the 
trail — a rattler had nipped him on the hand — an’ I gave 
him all the bug-jooce I hed along. You go down to 
the c’rell arter supper — east side, near the gate — an’ 
take a look at him. Jest hand me ernother slice o’ that 
’ere bacon. You kin hev all yer canned truck. Thar 
ain’t nothin’ on airth that puts life inter yer like good 
old sow-belly.” 

The two poisons were still raging war in the internal 
regions of Horse-in-the-Water when the cowboy went to 
look at him in the moonlight. In spite of the fierce 
heat of the day, the air was rather chill when he reached 
the spot. So he threw over the Apache’s dark form a 
heavy coating of old gunny-sacks. 

“ Between Apaches and rattlesnakes,” thought he, 
“ there isn’t much choice, but as long as father’s taken 
the trouble to try to save this fellow, I may as well 
carry the Samaritan job out to its logical conclusion. 
Lord, how he snores ! ” 

Horse-in-the-Water was lying on his back, his face 
turned toward the stars. 

“ I suppose this wild man has a right to live, after all, 
as well as we,” he went on, looking abroad on the moonlit 
scene, a more tender feeling creeping into his heart. 


142 


HORSE- IN- THE- WA TER. 


The silvery light softened the harsh features of the 
desert just as it softened the features of the sleeping 
Apache. The fluted columns of the sahuaro cacti, with 
their grotesque arms, looked strangely unreal in the sol- 
emn light, their thorny ridges sparkled with the spines 
on which the moonlight glimmered, making them lose 
the forbidding appearance worn by them in the broad 
light of day. Thinking of the tribes that had scoured 
that wild plain since the time the sea had receded and 
left it naked there, the young man viewed anew the 
rights and wrongs of the children of the desert and the 
slumbering Apache seemed to fit into the scene in a. 
way that made his own presence seem an intrusion. It 
was a poetic feeling, and not every cowboy is capable 
of it. And, what was more, it was directly opposed to 
all his former convictions. 

Early next morning, when the cowboy went out to 
feed the horses, he saw Horse-in-the-Water sitting up 
against the side of the stable. The Indian rubbed his 
belly with his brown hand, and said he was “ heap sick.” 
There was much trouble in his stomach, and his head 
felt at if it were a cushion for scorpions’ tails. When 
told that he ought to thank God that he was alive, he 
said he supposed so, but he was not sure. 

He was given a mild dose of Sunderland’s whisky, 
and he felt somewhat better. He lay about the stable 


HORSE-IN- THE- WA TER. 


143 


during the day, grunting and making wry faces. That 
evening he ate two pounds of bacon, a loaf of bread, a 
large dish of beans, and drank a pint of tea ; after which 
he went back to his gunny-sack bed and snored so 
loudly as to frighten the coyotes into silence. 

Old Sunderland went down the corral at dawn to 
look after his dusky patient. He was gone, and he had 
left no sign. 

S’pose we Oughter be glad he didn’t take the bosses 
with him,” was the old man’s remark. “ Mebbe that 
was the way he tuk to express his gratitood — not stealin' 
’em. I’ve heerd some mighty pooty stories ’bout 
Injun gratitood. Mebbe we’ll see a stronger sign of it 
than this some on these days. He may warn us when 
his folks goes out rippin’ an’ burnin’ ag’in. They made 
it kinder skeery for us the last time.” 

Phil left the ranch a week later to share the luck of 
a cowboys’ camp, and the old man was supposed to re- 
main there until he should return. So he did, as far as 
the matter of residence went, but he had his favorite 
phantom to pursue — that of gold-seeking among the 
buttes to the northward. He would take his horse and 
go away for the day, returning to the cabin at night. 
His prospecting had thus far gone for nothing, but he 
was always striking big ledges in his dreams, and pick- 
ing up nuggets as large as his head ; and these and 


144 


HORSE-IN-THE WATER. 


certain “ indications ” kept his hopes alive. It would 
have been unbearably lonely there at the ranch had he 
had nothing to do, but, as it was, with the excitement 
of prospecting, he managed to get along very well. If 
there was no gold to be had in the hills, he would dem- 
onstrate that fact to his complete satisfaction. If there 
was gold there it should be his. 

So he pecked at the rocks and delved in the crevices, 
and one day he stumbled upon a “ rich find.” So 
long and eager had been his search that the finding of 
the gold nearly threw him off his mental balance. The 
yellow metal lay in scales in the cracks of the rock. 
What he could pick and scrape together, by most 
laborious effort, was almost pure gold. After living so 
many years the life of a poor man, he was now given 
a chance to take from Fortune’s lap enough to make 
him rich. But it was hard work. He went at it early 
and remained at it late, giving himself but a few 
minutes in which to snatch up a little food, and he 
hardly knew when he slept, for he tossed about in his 
blankets and thought over the wealth that was becom- 
ing his. And when he did fall into a doze, he was 
driving his pick in the rocky gullies again, and was 
sure to waken with a start over some “ big find ” that 
his dreamy brain was picturing. And with all his 
wealth, he fretted and fevered over the slowness with 


HORSE-IN- THE- WA TER. 


145 


which he was taking out the gold. If he had his boy 
with him to help him, he thought, he would make 
swifter strides in securing the great fortune that lay 
there in the hills for them. But the cowboy would 
not return for nearly a month, and as he was following 
the camp, the Lord knew where, it would be useless 
to send a messenger to him. As for going himself, 
that was out of the question, for it would be losing 
valuable time, and some one might jump the claim 
while he was gone. Had he been less unreasonable, 
he would have at once looked upon this mischance as 
one not at all likely to occur. For no one had ever 
looked for gold in that desolate place before, and no 
one would be at all likely to look now. So the secret 
was safe enough, and he could have taken his time. 
But the lust of gold was upon him, and he chose the 
killing pace. 

When Phil finally turned homeward with his cow- 
boy friends, and they had rounded up the cattle at the 
station, he was surprised to get word through a neigh- 
bor who lived twenty miles from his home that his 
father had been taken ill. 

“He needs medicine,” said the neighbor, “you 
oughter take him up a good, big bottle of quinine 
bitters and some salts. He’s got plenty o’ whisky, but 

a man can’t most alius keep alive on whisky. Dunno 
10 


146 


HORSE-IN- THE- WA TER. 


what ails him, but he seems pooty badly pulled 
down.” 

Phil made haste to the store and purchased the 
quinine mixture — nearly a quart of it — and the salts. 
He also bought some porous plasters and a bottle of 
liniment, thinking in a vague way, they might be of 
some good. 

“ You heern ’bout the ’Paches breakin’ loose from 
the reservation, didn’t yer ? ” asked the storekeeper. 
“ No ? Wal, they’re out and they’ve got ammynition 
’nough to last ’em a year. How they git it all’s a 
mystery, but I think it’d be a dam’ good job to go up 
an’ hang some ’o them ere Injun agents on ’spicion. 
Yes, they’re out, but they’re not headed this way — 
which is a good thing for’em, considering the cow- 
boy we’ve got here now. Still, ef I was you, I’d 
keep a sharp eye on that forty-mile ride o’ yourn, an’ 
keep my Winchister in good trim.” 

Phil heard these words with impatience. His father 
was ill and needed medicine. That was of more con- 
sequence than many Apaches. He had heard of such 
“ scares ” before and they had amounted to nothing. 

He rode hard over the rough trail, and soon his 
broncho’s sides were steaming. It was another of the 
dry, hot days, to which the cowboy was accustomed ; 
but why it should be so infernally hot when he was 


HORSE-IN- THE- WA TER. 


147 


trying to make all speed homeward, he could see no 
good reason. Finally, the horse showed decided signs 
of ’pegging out. He had been ridden very hard for 
several days and was out of condition for this hasty 
journey over the dusty desert under the burning sun* 
So Phil reined him in and let him walk. The horse 
labored up a slope and halted for rest at the summit. 
The rider’s eye took in the long stretch of arid land 
before him. There lay the ranch, a good ten miles 
away. Under that cabin roof lay his father. He 
hoped and prayed that the illness might not be so 
serious as the neighbor had hinted. Still he was get- 
ting old. What a father he had been ! As tender as 
a woman, he had filled the place of both mother and 
father to him. How lonely, how desolate life would be 
should he be taken away ! He was impatiently eager 
to reach his side and to minister to his needs. He re- 
called how his father had nursed him when he was 
lying ill in that same little cabin. And now it was 
his turn to show his love. Yes, there lay the ranch, 
and it was a welcome sight. 

Then the cowboy turned his head a little and saw 
something that he would much rather not have seen. 
Clearly outlined on the summit of a slope to the right 
were the dark figures of a band of wild men, who were 
urging on the horses they rode, leaning far over the 


148 


HORSE-IN- THE- WA TER. 


heads of their beasts and digging their spiked heels 
into their sides. 

“ Indians — hostiles, and, worst of all, Apaches ! ” 
he groaned. “ I should have kept a better lookout. 
And yet what good, with this tired beast ! ” 

His teeth set firmly upon his sun-burned under-lip, 
and he scowled, looking almost as much a wild man 
as those riding so hard upon him. He spurred and 
lashed the broncho, and the maddened animal leaped 
forward, rapidly, shortening the distance between him- 
self and the cabin, but the cowboy’s heart fell when 
he saw that between himself and the dark devils, who 
were coming on so swiftly, the space was also lessen- 
ing. Still he might gain the cabin and keep the band 
at bay, for there were, he now saw, only a dozen of 
them, and they would hesitate to attack a fortressed 
foe. But here, dodging from behind the rocks, near 
at hand, was a grinning savage on whom the war-paint 
glistened. He had been down in a dry arroyo and 
the cowboy had not seen him before, so intently had 
he been watching the main body of Apaches, much 
farther off, and so eager had he been to gain the cabin. 

“ Why,” he cried, in a glad tone, “ it’s Horse-in-the- 
Water ! He surely is not hostile to us.” “ Hallo ! ” 
he shouted, “don’t you know me? Remember the 
rattlesnake-bite and my father’s whisky ? ” 


HORSE-IN- THE- WA TER. 


149 


The Indian grunted, but there was little sign of rec- 
ognition or remembrance on his ugly face. As a 
matter of fact, he remembered well enough. 

“ You must remember ! ” cried the cowboy, his 
hands clutching his rifle. “ Go tell your people we 
are friends and keep them off our ranch ! ’’ 

“ You got whisky ? ” asked the Horse-in-the-Water, 
still with the hideous grin on his face. 

“ No got whisky. Only medicine for my father. He 
very sick.’’ 

“ Give me bottle — heap good med’cine for Injun ! ” 
And he grinned more horribly than ever. 

“ I tell you it’s not whisky. Let me go ! ” For the 
Apache’s hand had grasped the bottle which was bulg- 
ing the cowboy’s pocket. “ Let go, I say ! ” And he 
drew back and dug the spurs into his horse. But 
Horse-in-the-Water was close alongside on a fresher 
horse, and he was preparing to enforce his demand 
for the bottle. They w^ere too close together to make 
the rifle of any use, and when the cowboy saw the 
Apache’s knife flash in the sunlight, he threw back his 
hand to his hip-pocket. But the revolver fell from his 
hand, and he dropped to the white earth with a gaping 
knife-wound in his back, and lay as silent as the rock 
beside him. 

The Apache grinned again, this time a most diabolb 


HORSE-IN- THE- WA TER. 


ISO 

cal grin, as he looked at the dripping blade. Quickly 
he returned it to its sheath. His wild comrades were 
close upon him. They would soon be clamoring for 
the whisky, and he would have to share it with them. 
So he pulled the cork hastily, and took a deep draught 
from the bottle. Infinite disgust was at once written 
on his face. He spat out as much of the bitter liquid 
as he had not swallowed, and dashed the bottle against 
the rock. It was a white man’s trick ! The cowboy’s 
fire-water would poison him. He waved his hand 
wildly to the on-coming braves, whose heads were hot 
for slaughter. 

The yelling band rode madly forward. He did not 
join them. He yelled more wildly than all the rest. 
He swung his rifle in the air. He jerked his mus- 
tang’s head from side to side, and yelled again. He 
looked at some spot of blood upon his hands. It was 
good red blood, but it was only a taste, and he thirsted 
for more. With a cry of frenzy, he led the way to the 
cabin where the sick man lay. 


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There was no accounting for it. She could have 
been anything she chose in that little Georgia town. 
She could have married any man not already married, 
from the blacksmith up to the Justice of the Peace 
himself. 

But she chose to throw herself away. 

When the proselyting elder of the Latter-Day Saints 
left the town with his three converts, Rosina among 
them, the people arose in their might and talked of 
running after him and hanging him to the most conven- 
ient tree. It was terrible, they said, that a poor girl like 
she, with no parents to look after her, should embrace 
such an awful religion as Mormonism. They talked 
a good deal about the matter. That is the way they 
arose in their might. 

And so Rosina, firm in her new-found faith, was 
taken across the plains in an emigrant train to Salt 
Lake. 

A cattleman, named Nephi Hearn, who could quote 

153 


154 


PERFECTL Y LEGAL. 


verses from the Book of Mormon by the yard, came up 
from Arizona and met her at the elder’s house. He 
saw that she was fresh-cheeked, large-eyed and black- 
haired, and he began forthwith to make love to her. 

Now love and all that were not a part of Rosina’s 
programme, if, indeed, she had any programme at all. 
She had gone to the land of the Saints with her pre- 
cious noddle full of the beauties of the doctrines of 
Joe Smith, but when it came to the Brighamite part of 
the religion — the marrying and giving in marriage — 
she hesitated. 

Perfect simplicity of faith shone from her eyes when 
she faced the music, or rather, the big ugly man before 
her. The Bishop told her she must marry Hearn, and, 
of course, she married him. 

After they had gone through the Endowment House 
and taken all the “ Obligations,” he carted her over three 
hundred miles of alkali desert and sandy wastes to his 
ranch in Stone Jug valley, which is in Central Arizona. 

Rosina did not like this journey. The cart had a 
canvas cover that shaded her head, but the heat beat 
up from the ground like the heat from burning Go- 
morrah, and her pretty cheeks became tanned and 
pink. They looked all the prettier for that, but she 
did not like the feel of them. And this big man who 
married her — who was he, and where was he taking 


PERFECTLY LEGAL. 


15s 


her to ? Ah, well, one must have faith ! The Saints 
all have their trials. The man was doubtless a good 
man. The Bishop had said so. He would care for 
her. She would love him after a time, perhaps, and if 
not, why there was the Book to read and the hymns to 
sing and the prayers to repeat. 

It was well with her soul. What mattered the rest ? 

At Stone Jug ranch Hearn introduced her to his two 
other wives. His other wives ! It made her cheek 
flame and her eye flash. 

Here was something of which she had not before 
been made aware. But even had some one at the first 
bluntly told her that she had gone among a polygamous 
people she would have been none the wiser. Polygamy 
meant no more to her simple mind than did polytheism 
or polarization. 

Of course, it was all a hoax. Still, if it were, it 
seemed strange that Hearn and the two women should 
carry themselves so grimly. The women were ugly, 
and jealousy made them uglier still. Their faces were 
brown with it. 

She doubted and doubted. But when Hearn was 
away the women took pains to explain everything to 
her. They threw light on several shady chapters in the 
Book. They repeated passages from the sermons of 
the dead and gone Brigham. 


156 


PERFECTLY LEGAL. 


Then she saw, and, seeing, shook with the rage that 
was in her. She was destined to see other proofs, but 
of these we will not inquire. It was enough. She 
tore the Book into little bits and walked the ground 
like a tigress, or, which is much the same, like an en- 
raged Southern woman. 

Now, the Stone Jug Ranch was forty miles from any- 
where, but she turned her back upon it that very night 
and fled away over the desert. 

Strange shapes shot past her in the night. Coyotes 
howled on her track. The cactus pricks seemed like 
the stings of serpents. The dust of the desert was in 
her mouth and in her hair. 

She walked all night and until noon the next day, 
when she came in sight of a cowboys’ camp. To her 
unaccustomed eye it seemed only a half-mile away, but 
she forced her aching feet for six full miles before she 
reached the tents. 

“ A gal in trouble ? ” That was enough for Big 
Josselyn to know. He was the chief of the camp 
and he made the rest “stan’ roun’,” as they put 
it. 

“ Give her suthin’ to drink — a nip out’n that air best 
bottle.” Big Josselyn ordered, as he laid the fainting 
girl down upon his blankets. “An’, say, you little 
man, there, with nothin’ to do, an’ all day to do it in, 


PERFEC TL Y LEGAL. 


57 


jest hump yerself an’ git up a good fire an’ cook the 
best meal ye know how to make.” 

The little man with nothing to do had plenty to do 
all that day. He cooked his level best and scraped the 
rust from dishes that had not been cleaned for a month. 

And the other boys. How they helped and how 
they hung about to catch a glimpse of her ! It was a 
large day for them all. 

There was set before the grateful Rosina a “ bounti- 
ful repast.” Of this she ate freely and then she felt 
better. By noon the next day she was herself again. 

How the boys gazed at her, every man Jack of them 
dead in love with her ! 

Now that she was well, it was time, she thought, to 
go on her way. But the big-hearted, generous Josselyn 
would not hear of it. Strange, isn’t it, how in twenty- 
four hours a woman with two big eyes can get into 
one’s heart and fill one’s whole mind ? No, Josselyn 
would not let her go. 

“ But my husband will be after me,” she said, with 
a look like a frightened fawn’s, “ and I cannot go back 
to him.” 

“Your hus ” Josselyn could not finish the awful 

word. The revelation nearly laid him flat. He did 
not look half the man he had looked a moment before. 


“Yes, my husband.” 


158 PERFECTLY LEGAL. 

Then she told him all about it. 

“ And I tore that Book of Mormon into ten million 
little pieces,” she said with tightly closed teeth, at the 
end of her story. 

“ Good enough,” he said, taking heart a bit. 

But all the afternoon he chewed on the bitter reflec- 
tion. “ She’s married to him after all.” He could see 
it in no other way. 

“ After the boys had all left camp next morning — all 
save Josselyn — down came Nephi Hearn with a very 
black face. He wanted to know where his wife was. 
He was told by Josselyn that she was there in camp, 
but that she would not go back with him. 

“ She won’t, eh ? ” and out flashed Nephi’s six-shooter 
in a twinkling. 

“ No, she won’t,” and Josselyn’s six-shooter was 
gripped firmly in his hand. 

Now, any man is a fool who will draw his pistol 
without sufficient grit to live up to the drawing of it. 
It was all bully- wragging on Nephi’s part. He wanted 
to frighten Josselyn. He saw now that he had made 
a mistake. The error would have cost him his life 
had he had a more excitable man to deal with. 

Yes, your wife’s here. Put up that gun or I’ll make 
a charming widow of her in jest two seconds.” 

The weapon went back into the coward’s holster. 


PERFECTLY LEGAL. 


- 159 


Josselyn smiled. 

“ Now keep up your hands till I tell you to put ’em 
down,” said he. Then, without turning his head, he 
called. 

“Come out, little one.” 

Rosin a came forth from a covered wagon. 

“ Now, what do you think of a good, solid, perfectly 
legal divorce ? ” asked the man who held the large 
shining key to the situation, smiling in his turn. 

She looked at him questioningly. 

“It would be just magnificent,” she said, after a 
moment. 

And Nephi scowled until his eyebrows came nearly 
to his cheek-bones. 

“ Wal, in Si Jones’ kit there’s a bible. Go an’ git it.” 

She obeyed readily, and came back with a little worn 
volume in her hand. 

“ Now, there’s somethin’ that’s jest about fourteen 
million times better’n the Book o’ Mormon. Nephi 
Hearn, stick your right paw up into the air and put 
your other on this ’ere book. Rosina Hearn, you do 
the same.” 

Rosina edged as far away from her husband as she 
could, while she put the tips of her fingers on the book. 

“ An’ now do you both swar never agin to be man an’ 
wife, so long as you both shall live } ” 


i6o 


PERFECTL Y LEGAL. 


“ Yes,” said Rosina, firmly. 

Nephi hesitated. 

The key to the situation looked at him with its one 
unwinking eye, and he drawled out : 

“ Ya-as.” 

“Amen,” said Josselyn. 

Then he took the book and put it in his pocket. 

“ Now git out o’ here as fast as the Lord ’ll let ye, 
Nephi Hearn — you slabsided saint. We prefer the 
comp’ny o’ coyotes to yourn any day o’ the week.” 

And Nephi mounted his mustang and fled away, 
filling the air with choice Mormon oaths. 

When the boys heard of it they were mightily pleased. 

“ Now she can marry anybody she fancies, can’t 
she ? ” remarked Blue Peters, grasping Josselyn’s 
shoulder. 

Josselyn never looked handsomer than when he 
made reply : 

“ No, not any one ; a very partickler one.” 

And so it turned out. 


V 


f 


KATE OF THE DESERT. 





KATE OE THE DESERT. 


The cowboy’s face wore a serious look. His eye 
glanced furtively across the sagebrush plain. It saw 
no living object and yet it seemed to see a host of 
avenging spirits. Then it fell again upon the gruesome 
thing at his feet. His face showed deeper concern 
than ever. He did not move, his chaparejo-covered 
legs standing as firm as legs of marble. 

He had just killed a man, and was thinking it over. 
He had never broken the sacred clay before. It was, 
indeed, a terrible business. Why he should feel so 
much as a grain of remorse he did not understand. 
He that lay so silent at his feet had been a wicked 
man. He had slain men himself — one of them with- 
out the shadow of a cause. He had valued human 
life almost as cheaply as that of a coyote or a buzzard. 
He had quarrelled with the man who had just slain him, 
and had thought that he had him at his mercy, for he 
had stood at the point of his six-shooter. But his in- 
tended victim had, by dexterity and suddenness that 

163 


164 


KATE OF THE DESERT. 


surprised even himself, contrived to whip out his own 
pistol and shoot his enemy down. 

There was nothing to grieve over, and Jeff Dodd was 
not the man to grieve much, anyway. But even though 
the element of grief be left out, this killing of one’s 
first man is an ugly thing to think of sometimes, even 
for a cowboy. 

Well, he was alone. No one had seen the deed 
done. He would bury the man where he had fallen, 
and no one would know anything about it. So he 
w^ent to his cabin near by and brought back a shovel. 
The ground was dry, but it was sandy, and not hard to 
dig in. Soon he had his man buried. 

Just as he was throwing the last few shovelfuls of 
earth on the grave he heard the pounding of a horse’s 
hoofs upon the ground not far away. He turned 
his head and saw a young woman riding toward 
him. 

“ His wife — his widow, I mean ! Great God ! ” 

Cold as death he turned in that instant. He barely 
had time to regain control of his face when she rode 
up. Why his mouth should have twitched so terribly 
when he caught sight of her, and why he should feel 
so guilty, he could not understand, for this was a no- 
account man that he had killed — a beast of a man — 
and he had slain him in self-defence. 


KATE OF THE DESERT. 165 

“ Good morning, Mr. Dodd. I am looking for Mr. 
Harris. Have you seen him ? ” 

Dodd, standing at dead Harris’s feet, made a nega- 
tive motion with his head. He could not trust his 
tongue with speech for the moment. It was an organ 
of uncertainty just then. 

“ You see,” she went on, “ he went away from home 
last night. I fear that he has been drinking again.” 

Her voice quavered. Her face went nearer the sad- 
dle-horn. It was a man’s saddle on which she sat. 
Now, when her eyes fell, he could look at her. An 
idle thought ran through his mind. How was it that, 
in spite of burning sun and desert wind, she kept her 
face so free from tan? Yes, at such a moment, this 
thought was as strange as it was idle, but it broke the 
tension and loosened his tongue. He told her that 
Harris had not come his way for a week. He was 
going down to the station after he had finished bury- 
ing his dead calf, and if he saw her husband, and he 
were intoxicated, he would bring him home. 

She thanked him and rode away. He had been 
glad enough to be near her at other times, but now he 
gave a deep sigh of relief as he saw her light dress 
fluttering down the trail, and the form he had loved to 
look upon grew smaller to his sight. Even now he 
could not withstand the fascination of that form. He 


i66 


KATE OF THE DESERT 


went to his cabin, and through the window kept his 
eye fixed upon her until she disappeared down an ar- 
royo, and there was only the little cloud of dust hang- 
ing over the margin of the hollow to show where she 
had been. The dust-cloud faded, and he came back 
within himself again. 

“ This frees her,” was his one thought. 

He did not go down to the town that day, as he had 
said he would do. He remained about, casting an 
anxious eye abroad now and again to assure himself 
that no one was about the place. If Kate Harris did 
not find her husband she might suspect that he had 
been slain, and that calf-burying idea was, after all, a 
very poor one. Cowboys do not bury dead calves. 

That night the coyotes yelped among the sagebrush 
as they had never yelped before. Dodd could no more 
sleep than he could fly, and, after a long and fruitless 
trial, during which all his former methods of sleep-pro- 
ducing had utterly failed, he arose, dressed himself, 
and went out. 

How the coyotes yelped ! 

The slender horn of the new moon sent a light down 
upon the desert that made its desolate face more awful 
than he had ever seen it before. He remained without 
the cabin for a long time, and when he went back he 
was very tired. The yelping pack were lifting up their 


KATE OF THE DESERT 


167 


doleful voices, but now the soul-grating sounds came 
from afar. The moment the cowboy’s head touched 
the pillow he fell fast asleep. 

When he went out to feed his cattle in the little cor- 
ral back of the cabin next morning, one of the cows 
was bewailing the loss of her newly-born. When he 
heard the mournful cry he smiled a strange smile. 

Not for many days did the cowboy see the woman 
who had been the one woman on earth to him. At 
last he mustered up courage to go and visit her. She 
lived ten miles away, and the ride over to her cabin in 
the crisp, fresh air did him a world of good. As the 
swift gallop of the fleet mustang made the breeze 
hum in his ears there seemed to come to him a voice 
of cheer. Why should he not marry her ? What law 
was there against it ? Though there were a thousand 
laws he could wed her, for she should never know. 
The secret was now absolutely safe. 

She was sitting at an open window when he entered. 
Her large, dark eyes showed traces of tears, and her 
softly-rounded cheek seemed whiter than ever. He 
knew that she had not given up the search for her dead 
husband, for while they talked of such matters as came 
easiest to their lips, she glanced from the window 
now and then, and her eye swept the desert floor as a 
mariner’s sweeps the sea. 


KATE OF THE DESERT 


1 68 

Then there came an ugly quarter of an hour in which 
there seemed absolutely nothing to say. For the kind 
of words from that soft mouth of hers that he would 
have listened to with best interest he would have given 
much. But, then, after all, it was not her place to say 
such words, and — deuce take it ! — she did not know 
that she was free. He knew that her love for her 
husband had died long ago — if there had been any love, 
which he liked to doubt. 

“ She still cares for me, as she has all along,” ran 
his thought, “ but — she fears me.” 

The woman read what was surging through his brain 
and heart, but not the deadly secret there. She 
looked at him reproachfully, as if to make him feel the 
cruelty he was inflicting. Her eyes said : “ How can 
you come to harass me in the time of my distress } ” 

His eyes fell before hers, but he took the time when 
she was again looking abroad to mumble in broken 
speech something of what lay in his heart. 

She kept her gaze upon the gray plain as she said 
in return : 

“ You are torturing me, and you know it. For God’s 
sake, stop. My husband would have a right to kill me 
if he knew I had listened to you ! ” 

But he is dead.” 

“ Perhaps — but how do you know ? ” 


KATE OF THE DESERT 


169 


It was a home-thrust, and there was a- tone of sus- 
picion in the voice that made the man turn sick. 
This would not do. He precipitated another theme 
upon her at once, and the swift change made her more 
suspicious still. 

When he stood in the doorway, his big slouch hat in 
his hand, he looked so like the Jeff of old that her dis- 
trust wavered in the background and she smiled in 
response to some light speech of his. He made too 
much of that smile. He felt about to throw himself 
forward and clasp her in his arms and sweep away all 
objections by a torrent of hot words. 

He could not restrain himself from the first impulse, 
but when she fought him off and told him his love was 
an unholy thing, he could not bring himself to do what 
he would. But he did manage to burst out with : 

“ Say what you will, Kate, you are mine. You 
were mine from the day you came riding to my 
cabin.” 

“ That day — why, it was the first on which he 
was missing — the day I began the long and fruitless 
search for him. How did you know he was dead 
then ? ” 

The mound of freshly-dug earth, and his look of 
vague terror as she had ridden up to him that day, 
came back to her like a flash, and she reeled in the 


170 


KATE OF THE DESERT 


doorway. He started forward, his passion strong upon 
him. 

“ Don’t touch me ! ” she gasped. “ Go away ! ” and 
she fled with uncertain step into an inner room. Then 
he went home, with lowered head and darkened eyes. 
What a fool he had been. She might have guessed it 
all from the first. There seemed no hope for him now, 
unless his brain could hatch some new device to satisfy 
her mind. 

That night, as he lay awake, his ear caught a strange 
noise. It was as of the chopping of a spade into the 
earth, and once or twice he heard a clinking as of 
metal upon stone. The sounds were heard for some- 
time, and they were followed by other noises, as of the 
dropping of earth. Strange as the sounds were they 
did not frighten him. He lay on his couch and smiled. 

The light of triumph gleamed in his eye. 

“ This will end her suspicion,” he said. “ Thank 
God, she does not know that other spot. But that she 
will never know.” 

He smiled again next morning when he stood by the 
mound of newly-disturbed earth, and saw about it the 
prints of Chinese sabots. Her man had been there 
and had made full investigation. She could trust 
China Jim. She would believe what he said. 

The cowboy was now full of confidence. He went 


KATE OF THE DESERT 


171 

to Kate’s house again and again during the days that 
followed, and though he felt that he was gaining ground 
but slowly, still he was almost satisfied. The worst of 
it all was that she kept her distance, and her eyes looked 
from the window with searching gaze as before. Those 
eyes never relaxed their vigilance, though the heart was 
not in the watching. 

Dodd had been a poor man, but now there came to 
him the news that a wealthy relative in England had 
died and left him an estate of goodly value. But he 
must be there by a certain day, or another claimant 
would snatch the prize. 

He hailed the coming of the fortune with a great joy. 
She, too, was poor, and now that he was to be rich 
there was the greater incentive for her to wed him. 
He mounted his horse and rode swiftly down the trail 
to tell her the news. She was not at home when he 
reached the house. China Jim said she had gone up 
the Owl Butte trail on her horse, but she would return 
before long. Dodd saw a little cloud of dust about a 
mile up the trail, and, spurring his mustang into a hard 
gallop, he started to overtake her. As she was riding 
rather slowly this was easily done, and ere long he was 
by her side. 

She greeted him kindly, and while she listened to 
the story of his good fortune her lips parted in a glad 


172 


KATE OF THE DESERT. 


smile, and her big, dark eyes sparkled with a new 
light. She had looked bewitchingly fresh and charm- 
ing when he rode up, but now she was positively daz- 
zling. So, of course, he was led to take up the old 
strain again ; but when he did so the smile faded and 
the eyes saddened. The afternoon sunlight streamed 
over her drooped head, the dry, gray earth became 
the object of her gaze, and the only answer she made 
was : 

“ You know this is cruel. How can I marry you ? ” 

The reply stung him. It aroused all his argumen- 
tative force. She saw that he was about to make a 
strong appeal, and she tried to stay his hot words. 
They were now off the trail, and were riding aimlessly 
over the desert. 

“ How very warm it is,” she said ; “ there is not a 
breath of air stirring.” She struck a lone sagebush 
with her whip, scattering the gray leaves before her. 
“ And what is that ? ” 

She pointed down the horizon to the right at a 
great black cloud that was moving swiftly up, and as 
they looked they caught the low growl of the wind 
as it swept the plain and raised the dust in great 
swirling masses. 

“ A dust storm ! ” she cried. We must ride back, 
or we will lose the trail.” 


KATE OF THE DESERT 


173 


While she spoke the growling increased in volume. 
There was war in the air. Louder and still louder the 
wind blew its hoarse horn. Their faces were pelted 
with small, hot shot that stung them like pin-pricks. 
The mustangs turned their heads instinctively. No 
horse would face the driving sand — not even a broncho. 
Dodd thought that he could see the trail, and they 
made haste in the direction which he indicated, but 
soon the storm reached out and swallowed them. Then 
they could see only a few yards ahead, and finding the 
trail became more a matter of chance and guesswork 
than of anything else. They did not reach it, though 
they rode up and down in the thick of the dust-clouds. 
Soon they were tired, and paused in the lee of a huge 
mass of rocks. Dismounting, they crouched in a corner 
and awaited the abating of the fury of the storm. 

Now he could talk to her, and though the wind 
brayed and hissed and seemed to have the earth itself 
in its teeth, he went on with his wild speech. 

“ You say that I am cruel to you,” he said, as she 
crouched closer to the rock and shuddered at his 

m 

words, “but it is you who are cruel to me. You 
know I have loved you from the first, and I have 
reason to think that you care for me. Now that you 
are free, why will you not accept your freedom and 
come to me ? ” 


174 


KATE OF THE DESERT 


“ Free ? You do not know that,” she replied. “ Can 
you not have a little mercy } ” 

He saw that his tone and speech had been too 
rude. Coupled with the awful sound of the storm, 
they had stricken terror to her soul. “ Forgive me,” 
he said, in a milder tone ; “ I know that I am rough, and 
unworthy of you, but can you not stoop and raise me } ” 
She trembled and made some faint reply, but the 
wind caught it and flung it away from him. 

“ You endured that man for three years ; you did 
not grow wan and pale as some women do in such a 
life, but all the time you were eating your heart out. 
Your spirit was not broken, though all its fibres were 
tried. And I — I have stood by and suffered as you 
have suffered. I have learned a lesson. It was my 
fault from the first, but I did not know how much you 
were to me until you married that man. You may 
not understand me. I know you mistrust me, and yet, 
I say, I have suffered. And now I plead for my life 
as much as for yours. Say, dearest, that you will marry 
me.” 

He looked at her hungrily, awaiting her word. But 
she could not force a speech. He laid his hand upon 
hers. His touch seemed to burn her, for her own 
hand was icily cold. She shrank from him and hid her 
face. 


ATATH: OF THE DESERT. 


175 


Now the powers of the air seemed to relent their 
wild passion, and though there were still great clouds 
of dust rising and falling, he could at last see the 
trail. She raised her head and saw him looking at it 
moodily. Then she sprang to her feet, and without 
waiting for his assistance, flung herself on her horse 
and was away, with fluttering dress and tossing hair. 
He rode after her in hot haste, but she never turned 
her head. Suddenly his mustang stumbled in a bur- 
row and went lame. So she shot far ahead. When 
he at last reached the house the storm had ceased, 
and the sun smiled again upon the wind-swept 
sands. 

She was sitting at the old place in the window when 
he entered, and her eye was running over the desert. 

“ I await your final answer,” he said. “The train 
leaves Comanche at seven o’clock, and I start for Eng- 
land then.” 

His voice stumbled badly when he said these words, 
and he stood with his fingers on the handle of the 
door. Yet she gave no sign, and looked out over 
the desert with the same searching gaze. If she was 
still looking for that dead man, what was the use ? 
For the hundredth time he was on the point of telling 
her the secret, and yet he could not bring himself to 
it. For the thousandth time his mind clutched help- 


176 


KATE OF THE DESERT. 


lessly for a reasonable way to present proof of Harris’s 
death without involving himself. But he could not 
face those great, truthful eyes with such an awful lie 
as he would have to tell to make it all seem right to 
her. He had not enough confidence in himself to carry 
out such a gross deceit. 

As for telling her all, that was out«of the question, 
he now saw clearly. She would run from him as from 
a rattlesnake. She looked so pure, so sweetly pure, 
as she sat there, that it seemed a blasphemy, this love 
of his — it must so seem in her eyes. What a coward 
he looked to her. If she knew — if she only knew, 
and yet did not know all — not that he was the slayer ! 
But this was impossible. She might come to him. 
There was nothing to prevent it. If they were not to 
be united the fault lay with her, not with him. A man 
would do this. Why would not a woman } It had 
been a long time. It was her duty to take his death 
for granted. Why should she still be looking for some- 
body whom she did not want to see, anyway — some- 
body whom she ought to be glad to have some reason- 
able excuse for believing dead ? 

She still stared hard out of the window, and con- 
tinued to do so for some time. At last she turned her 
head, and with eyes that told of the great struggle 
through which she had been, and that told of the 


KATE OF THE DESERT, 


177 


crushing of her hopes and the sundering of all ties 
between them, she said in a low, strained voice : 

“ You know my heart and I know my duty. Per- 
haps he may return.” 

* ****** 

f And he went away and crossed the seas. And in 
J time her face came only faintly to his mind. For, of 
/ course, there came another woman. But she of the 
I desert remained and remembered. 







ATHLETIC MISS BROWN. 



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ATHLETIC MISS BROWN. 


Miss Brown’s baggage looked as if it had been all 
over Europe. When the man threw out trunk after 
trunk, and box after box in front of Colonel Hollister’s 
summer cottage at Tahoe that quiet June evening, 
Mrs. Hollister remarked as much to the Colonel, who 
did not take his cigar from his mouth to say : 

“ Yes, I see the Monte Carlo mark on the big one, 
and there’s a Christiania Hotel sticker on that valise. 
Then there’s ‘ Venizia,’ ‘ Wien,’ and all the rest. 
She’s travelled a good deal, I guess. Sort o’ queer, 
though, ain’t she, sending her things on ahead this 
way ? ” 

The Colonel was a large man and he looked at 
things in a large way, but he didn’t like queer people. 
They must all be hearty, everyday folks, do everything 
in the regular way and not talk about Ruskin or Her- 
bert Spencer. He had found neither of those gentle- 
men nor any of their kind a bit useful to him in his 
acquisition of corner lots in Los Angeles. 


i 82 


ATHLETIC MISS BROWN. 


“ Oh, she’s going to stop over a day at Truckee, you 
know. So I suppose she just kept some of her things 
there and sent the rest on ahead.” 

“ So there’s more coming, is there 1 Well, it does 
beat all what a lot of truck these girls travel with now- 
adays. Hello, is that Frakes ? ” 

About Lake Tahoe, early in the season, the arrival 
of a baggage wagon is quite an event. Frakes had 
come over from the hotel when he saw the dust coming 
down the road from the landing. He thought it might 
be Miss Brown’s dust — the Colonel’s wife had told him 
that a Miss Brown was coming — but he did not seem a 
bit disappointed when he saw that it was only her bag- 
gage. His straight form — somewhat thin it looked 
there in that light, as he came through the gate and up 
the gravel — was tall but not a bit awkward, rather 
athletic, in fact. He was dressed in a loose-fitting 
tweed suit and wore a tennis cap. He took one of 
the Colonel’s cigars from Mrs. Hollister, who held 
it out in that neat way that she always did such 
things. 

“ Don’t mind if I sit on the steps, do you ? ” was 
Frakes’ remark. 

“ Sit wherever you like,” said the Colonel. “ Ain’t 
it been hot, though, to-day ? ” 

“ Rather unusual thing up here. But I’ve been out 


A THLE TIC MISS BRO WN. 1 83 

on the lake trying for trout. Don’t bother much about 
the weather when there’s such good fishing.” 

“ Guess there’s some sherry cobbler or something 
fixed up inside,” said Hollister. “ Tell the girl to 
bring it out, won’t you, Marcia ? ” 

The Colonel’s wife rose lightly — she was a good deal 
younger than the Colonel — and by the time the point 
had been smoked from Frakes’ cigar he heard the ice 
tinkling in the glasses. The neat girl in the neat white 
apron, coming out of the shadow with the thin, dainty 
glasses in the little silver tray, had a pleasant look and 
the liquid mixture made the evening seem cooler. It 
was a true Sierra evening. The snow-crusted peaks, 
where the sun lingered longest, looked rosy white in a 
perfect wealth and luxury of light, and the pine tops on 
the nearer ridges were crayoned darkly against a high 
sky line that blurred out farther down into the blue 
smoke-drift. The pine scents came down strongly and 
mingled with the lake smell and the wood-smoke. 

“ And you say you don’t like it over there, Mr. 
Frakes ? I’m surprised. Of course you don’t think of 
going back to the pokey old city.” Mrs. Hollister 
looked at Frakes reproachfully. 

“ Oh, no ; but I’m irrevocably committed to a stern 
opposition to so much style. It’s getting worse and 
worse over at the hotel as the crowd gathers and the 


184 


ATHLETIC MISS BROWN. 


combat deepens. When I go a summering I don’t 
like to dress as if it were theatricals all the time and I 
were cast for the heavy society swell. Give me the 
brogans and the jumper when I’m in the country.” 

“ Then I’m afraid you won’t like Miss Brown. She’s 
style to no end,” said Mrs. Hollister. “ At least she 
was at Monterey last summer. Four changes a day, 
at the very least.” 

Frakes did not relent, but remarked that he had 
made no reference to the ladies — they had a right to 
dress as smartly as they pleased. 

“ And, by the way, your Delphine dresses as smartly 
as any of them.” A teasing smile went with Marcia 
Hollister’s teasing remark. 

Frakes looked toward the lake, across which the 
pine shadows were lengthening, and for reply knocked 
the white ash from his cigar. 

“ You didn’t tell us Mrs. Edgewood was going to 
bring her up next week, and you’re awfully mysterious 
about the date of the wedding. I know Del will like 
Miss Brown, even if you don’t. Of course, you’re not 
going back, and of course you’re not going to get into 
brogans and jumpers. Might have known it was 
all your own cynical make-believe. Del Edgewood 
wouldn’t look at you if you wore a jumper.” 

“ Yes, she would, too,” spoke up the Colonel. “ That 


A THLE TIC MISS BRO WM. 185 

girl has got good, solid sense. She’s the wife for you, 
Paul.” 

When Miss Alicia Brown came to the Colonel’s 
Frakes was hunting at the other side of the lake. When 
she heard that Paul Frakes was at Tahoe she wanted 
to go back. She had not seen him for two years. 
The last meeting was at Coronado and the last parting 
was the parting that so nearly undid her. From what 
she learned at the Colonel’s Paul did not know that 
she was the Miss Brown of old acquaintance. Mrs. 
Hollister did not know it either. They had discussed 
her but little. She was merely a Miss Brown. The city 
directory had pages of Browns, and as to this particular 
one Paul had little curiosity. The Hollisters made the 
hard carriage drive over to Tahoe responsible for 
Alicia’s pale face. 

“ She isn’t quite up to concert pitch ; that is all,” 
was the sympathetic Mrs. Hollister’s apology for the 
girl. And Alicia herself, as she glanced in the glass 
in the dainty room where the green lavender leaves 
hanging in bunches made the air so sweet, tried to 
make herself think that it was really the carriage drive 
or that it was anything but Paul Frakes’ presence at 
Tahoe. 

When Paul Frakes came a day later she was ready 
for him. She thought she enjoyed his start when he 


i86 


ATHLETIC. M/SS BROWN. 


saw what Miss Brown it really was. She knew her face 
did not go pink when his did. But of course it all 
passed oif pleasantly enough, he seemed so anxious to 
make friends. There was more to talk about than she 
had thought. He saw that she had grown a trifle 
rounder of form. Her eye was brighter and she looked 
better “ set up,” as the English have it. He heard with 
real pleasure — for it was in his line — that she had 
taken up athletics. Mrs. Hollister bragged of Alicia’s 
mountain-climbing, of her swimming, of her rowing and 
her club-swinging. She didn’t speak of the trapeze 
and bar. 

“ And she can beat ’em all at tennis,” was the Colo- 
nel’s confident boast. “ Don’t she look it ? ” 

She was not so proud of these things herself, as a 
rule, but there was delight in them now, for they 
showed him that she had not been pining — that she was 
not the “ tender lotus flower ” that Heine sang about. 

The Hollisters had challenged everybody to the 
death at tennis on Alicia’s account, and Alicia was 
good-natured enough to take their boasts in good part 
and to try to live up to them. But Mrs. Hollister’s 
behest — not concurred in by the Colonel — that she 
should not go in for anything heavier than tennis while 
at Tahoe was passed in silence. When they met at 
the net she looked sweetly cool and very fetching in 


ATHLETIC MISS BROWN. 


87 


her pink and white “ get up,” as the Colonel called it. 
She seemed an inch taller in tennis shoes. She played 
in a way that made the men stare radiantly and the 
girls, much flouted, were gracious enough to be apolo- 
getic for her. 

The old champions were dragged all over the ground 
and the dust was wiped up with them. They looked 
dreadfully humiliated. 

“ How red her face got ! ” said a sharp-shouldered 
blonde. “ Why does a girl want to throw herself into 
tennis so utterly regardless ? Trying to look ingenuous, 
too. Come away, Jim.” 

But Alicia had won easily. There was no straining, 
and her face was not red, only a little flushed. She 
looked gloriously handsome in Paul’s eyes. He had 
always thought before that her nose was rather too 
short, but he did not note that defect now. He was 
getting uneasy. He wished Delphine would hurry 
along. His betrothed couldn’t play tennis as Alicia 
did, but she could make all the girls die of jealousy 
with her whist. 

And it was that very night that Marcia Hollister told 
Alicia all about Delphine Edgewood. 

“ Known her a long time. Not much your style, 
dear. She’s from Hill’s Seminary, goes in for etching, 
brass-hammering, quite a mandolinist — that type, you 


i88 


ATHLETIC MISS BROWN. 


know. Rather dark, with big, deep eyes — a beauty, of 
course, for Paul Frakes would never look at any girl 
who was not a beauty. That’s right, lean back on the 
cushion, dear. The reaction from that tennis excite- 
ment has paled you again. I’m going to try to keep 
you quiet to-morrow.” 

“ Keep me quiet ? ” Alicia lifted her head as if in 
piteous contempt for the whole world of weak women. 
“ I’d like to see you pen me up. I’m as strong as ” 

But the head went back on the cushions and the big 
blue eyes closed languidly. 

The mountain climbing party was ready at the hotel 
next morning, and she was with it, Marcia Hollister’s 
threats counting for nothing. At noon Marcia received 
a note, brought back by an insurance clerk who had 
pegged out on the way and given it up. 

“ We are nine thousand feet high by the aneroid.” 
Alicia wrote. “ Sorry you didn’t come. The air up 
here is like yards and yards of fine silk velvet on the 
lungs. Mr. Frakes thinks he can beat me to the 
summit. Wait and see.” 

Honors were easy when the party came back. All 
agreed that Mr. Frakes and Miss Brown had reached 
the summit first at the same identical moment. 

“ She led him a wild chase, though, at first,” said 
the guide to the Colonel. “ We couldn’t see much of 


ATHLETIC MISS BROWN. 


189 


her either, and she blazed a very light trail. Coming 
down from the Meadows she beat them all. Below the 
first clump of big pines you couldn’t see her for dust.” 

“ Tut, tut, man ! ” said the Colonel, but he looked 
pleased. 

“ Don’t you feel nearly dead ? ” asked Marcia of 
Alicia after dinner up in Alicia’s sweet-smelling bed- 
room, where the girl was resting on the sofa. 

“ Not a bit of it — why should I ? And what’s more, 
I can’t. I’m promised for the hop to-night, don’t you 
know } But I shall only dance twice — once with the 
Colonel and once ” 

“ With Paul Frakes. I’ll have to write to Delphine 
about this, ’deed I shall. But what are you made of, 
child ? ” 

“ Flesh and blood, like yourself ; but unlike yourself, 
schooled to endure a little fatigue. You don’t know 
what Banting would do for you.” 

“ No, and I don’t want to know ; it’s too much effort. 
But you may do anything you want now. I give you 
up, but please don’t take up boxing and contorting.” 

“ I promise solemnly to refrain from acquiring either 
of those accomplishments.” 

Under the electric lights that night in the ballroom 
she looked so fresh and daintily cool, with her hair all 
pushed back from her forehead and with eyes that 


190 


A THLETIC MISS BROWN. 


shone with a warmer light than he had ever seen in 
them before, that Paul Frakes wondered what there 
was so new about her and so taking. Whatever it was 
he had never seen it before, but now it stood out 
strongly, though not warningly. 

He came up to claim her for a waltz, and when he 
and Alicia swung lightly through the swaying crowd he 
felt that he had never waltzed before. How she had 
improved her dancing since that last ball at Coronado. 

How she This would not do at all. He must 

keep Delphine better in mind, and as soon as he 
should take Alicia to her seat he must go through that 
unread letter. But somehow the moonlight’s invitation 
could not be disregarded, and somehow, with her 
cloak on and a cushioned boat just below the veranda, 
there could be nothing out of the way in suggesting a 
short row just over to the point and back. He did not 
know how she was fighting with herself, nor how un- 
fair he was, for they were in the boat and well off 
from from shore before he really took a good look 
at her. The strong moonlight made the water take 
on a clearness that was almost the wonderful clear- 
ness of Tahoe in the daytime, and she could see 
the golden specks on the bottom glimmering far be- 
low her as her hand that had been so hot trailed 
along in the cool water. When they came directly 


ATHLETIC MISS BROWN. 


91 


over a rock she crouched and shivered. It seemed 
as though the boat must strike it, though she knew 
it lay deep under them. Then they passed into water 
of awful depth and utter blackness. 

“You know, don’t you, that they call this Dead 
Man’s bay ? ” he asked. “ They say that no plummet 
that has ever been let down here has reached the 
bottom. Why do you shiver so ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” she said. “ A goose walked over 
my grave. Let us go back. I have heard that bodies 
that sink here never rise.” 

She shook again violently, and he looked at her in 
alarm. Returning his glance, she smiled. “ It’s just 
the night air. Isn’t that a dreamy view over there ! ” 

He was rowing slowly. “Let me take the oars,” 
she said. 

They changed seats, she very carefully, as if afraid 
to capsize the boat. When it rocked a little she 
shuddered again. But she took the oars, plied them 
steadily and strongly and soon they were back at the 
landing. 

He danced only once more that night. When he 
looked around for her she was gone. He took out 
Delphine Edgewood’s letter and read it all through, 
every word of it. Then he went out into the gray 
moonlight that flooded the whole mountain-side and lay 


192 


ATHLETIC MISS BROWN. 


soft over its rough folds and great creases. It was a 
fine night and a fine scene, one that ran utterly away 
from description, but nothing in him responded to it. 

In the days that followed Delphine sent up excuse 
after excuse, but she would surely leave the city for 
the lake before long. Meantime Frakes killed the 
pretty lake trout by the score, for the fishing was good. 
He kept away from the Colonel’s. 

On one of the warmest of those days when the very 
leaves of the poplars seemed to cease quivering and 
when the heat lines shook across the faces of the 
rocks, Alicia persuaded Mrs. Hollister to get out her 
bathing suit. Alicia had a very pretty one of her 
own, and she looked like a Hebe in it as she stood on 
the beach of the shallow little cove. Mrs. Hollister 
said that the season was backward and the Tahoe 
water, even on a day like this, was not really warm 
enough to bathe in, no matter w^hat the advertisements 
said ; but she would dabble along the shore if Alicia 
would stay by her and not indulge in any freaks. 

“ I’ll be as lamb-like as you wish,” pledged Alicia. 
“ And there isn’t a soul to be seen along the whole 
shore, so there’s nobody for us to pose for.” 

The water was cool, to be sure, but it had a freshen- 
ing feeling, and Alicia reveled in it and longed for a 
good swim. 


ATHLETIC MISS BROWN. 


93 


“ Isn’t that Paul Frakes’ skiff — the blue and white 
one ? ” asked Marcia. 

“ I believe it is, but he is rowing the other way. We 
are only two posts to him. 

She glanced out over the water and away flew all her 
color. 

“ Why, where is he — where’s Mr. Frakes ? ” she 
caught her breath with an effort. “ There is his skiff, 
but where is he ? ” 

“ Dear me ! ” blubbered Mrs. Hollister. “ Poor 
Paul ! Poor Paul ! He’s fallen out of his boat. It 
isn’t upset, but he’s fallen out. He’s drowned ; he’s 
drowned ! Uh, uh, uh ! ” And her shoulders moved 
up and down while she sobbed. “ But maybe he’s all 
right — maybe he’s clinging to the side. Oh, for a 
man to go and help him ! ” 

Alicia’s quick eye ran all along the shore. There 
was no boat near at hand. A quick, cool breeze sprang 
up and shook the surface of the great lake. She 
measured the distance to the skiff at a glance. It 
seemed a short quarter of a mile. She had swum 
much farther than that at Santa Cruz. 

“ Be quiet, dear,” she said with less calmness than 
she thought was in her. “ Sit down here and keep 
still.” 

Then she plunged into the water. The white arms 

13 


194 


ATHLETIC MISS BROWN. 


parted the low waves with a long, steady stroke. The 
white face, seen just above them, look whiter than ever. 
It was a picture of womanly strength and of womanly 
resolution. 

Her eyes were on the blue-and-white lines of the 
boat that danced over there in the mocking sunlight, 
the oars lying idly in the water — the oars so lately 
moved by his strong hands. How far apart they two 
were separated ! It came upon her then that it was all 
her fault — that estrangement. She had known him for 
a sensitive man. She knew his way — that he never 
spoke but once, and that for all time. Why had she 
trifled with him ? She fought with the waves that would 
keep her back from him. She swept them with her 
hands. But the coldness of the water out at this depth 
was penetrating her and weakening her. She was near- 
ing the little craft, but it was drifting, drifting. Why, 
here she was right upon it. She seized the side and 
hung her arms over it, looking down. Then she gave 
a loud, ringing laugh — an odd laugh of rejoicing. For 
there, in the bottom of the boat, lay Paul Frakes fast 
asleep ! The laugh and a splash of water falling from 
her long hair made him start up and stare hard. 

“ No, I’m not Takama, the spirit of the lake, nor 
even a fresh-water mermaid come to wake you from 
your midday-dreams,” she laughed, with full recovery 


ATHLETIC MISS BROWN. 


195 


of herself, “ but before you lie down in your boat to 
sleep another time, please hoist some sort of a signal, 
so your friends ashore will not fall into hysterics. Mrs. 
Hollister is fainting on the beach. Let me get in, and 
please row me back to her at once.” He looked in- 
effably foolish and murmured all sorts of excuses. He 
had read about the delights of lying in the bottom of a 
boat in Fenimore Cooper. He had had no thought of 
falling asleep nor of alarming anybody, but now he saw 
what a fool he had made of himself, and she had swum 
all the way out to the boat to rescue him. He deserved 
to be shot, or hanged, or anything. 

He got quite wet, bundling her into the boat. He 
put his coat about her, its blackness setting off her 
wet, snowy arms, that looked so freshly white. He 
buttoned up the coat and took off his shoes and insisted 
on putting them on her feet. Then he nearly upset 
the boat by a wild attempt to kiss her. 

“ Mr. Frakes.” i^She sounded her strongest contralto, 
frowning, all severity. ■ a 

Frakes collapsed, pulled himself together again, 
then taking up the oars rowed for dear life, the boat 
bumping the beach before he thought they were half 
way there. Mrs. Hollister was made her normal self 
and then Frakes helped them back to the cottage. 

Deeply humiliated for days, he could not do enough 


196 A'J hLE TIC MISS BRO WN. 

to show what he owed Alicia for her hard and well- 
meant effort. And while he was doing this Delphine 
was on her way up to Tahoe to give him the surprise 
of an unexpected arrival and also to give him the great 
pleasure of yielding to his last spring’s plea that the 
wedding should be on the first day of July, which 
seemed to him very close at hand. All this rather 
staggered Paul Frakes, but he struck the right note 
and looked as pleased as was expected of him. Del- 
phine could stay but a few days. She had to run back 
to prepare for the wedding. She saw little of Miss 
Brown and Frakes saw less. 

Delphine went down to the city “ to get her bridal 
harness together,” the Colonel said. Soon Frakes 
would follow. There were only ten days to the ist. 
They were strange days to Paul. Everything seemed 
strange. Alicia only seemed natural, though she was 
rather reserved. He called at the cottage quite often 
now. She was always there, though not always visible. 
She sang for him dutifully when asked. The summer 
sun had made him browner and he was very rugged- 
looking. He had never been a handsome man, but he 
was almost that now. The mountain air had done him 
a world of-good. 

The lake and the mountains seemed of double value 
in his eyes when he stood on the pier to take the little 


ATHLETIC MISS BROIVN. 


197 


Steamer for the farther shore, whence he would go by 
stage and train to the city and to his bride. The Hol- 
listers were to take the steamer with him to see him off 
on the stage, and Alicia was there, too. 

The night fell more quickly than was pleasant for a 
parting excursion, for the clouds had come down from 
the mountains and lay heavy over them and over every- 
thing, as if charged with something deadly. Alicia, on 
the after-deck, leaned upon the rail and saw the foam 
from the wheel drift back into the darkness. Frakes, 
with the Colonel and his wife, had invited her forward, 
but she sat there quietly, her eyes on the black water, 
telling them she would join them before long. Frakes, 
sitting near the bow, was thoughtful, but not heedless 
of his friends’ remarks. 

“ Here is Dead Man’s bay again,” came in Marcia’s 
awed tone. “ Isn’t it just dreadful ? What was that ? 
Wasn’t it a splash in the water ? ” 

“ A waterfowl perhaps,” said Frakes ; and the Col- 
onel reproved Mrs. Hollister for her nervousness. 

“ You’ll have a wife to look out for pretty soon, my 
boy. Cure her of nervousness the first thing, won’t 
you ? Make her take long walks, such as Alicia Brown 
takes. They say that’s good for it.” 

“ We’re nearly there. Go and get Alicia, Colonel,” 
said Mrs. Hollister. “ She’s mooning it back there 


1 98 A THLE TIC MISS BRO WN. 

somewhere. Give her a shake and call her back to 
earthly things.” 

The Colonel went, but did not return ; so his wife 
went after him. “ Where did you say she was sitting ? ” 
he asked dully. “ She is nowhere about on deck.” 

“ I’ll go down and hunt her up ; she’s in the cabin,” 
said Marcia. Soon she ran back up the cabin steps, 
her face showing oddly white in the lamplight. 

“ Call the Captain ! ” she breathed huskily, sinking 
into a seat. “ She’s — she’s ” 

“ Where is she ? ” demanded Frakes. 

“ I don’t know ; I can’t find her.” 

The Captain came, and he and his two men searched 
the little craft high and low, Frakes joining with them 
eagerly, now burning up with the fever of fear and then 
freezing with the chill of doubt. They put the boat 
about and made back at full steam carefully scanning 
the water • as they went. But though they searched 
clear back to the shore again, and back and forth until 
daylight, they could not find any trace of the lost 
girl. 

“ It was right here on Dead Man’s bay,” said Mar- 
cia Hollister, “ that I heard the splash when we first 
crossed over.” 

“ If the poor lady made that splash,” said the Cap- 
tain, “ we’ll never find her.” 


A THLE TIC MISS BRO WN. ioq 

“ But she was such a stout swimmer,” insisted the 
Colonel, “ she could have saved herself.” 

“ Oh,” said Marcia, “ it no doubt seemed so dark to 
her, poor darling, and the clouds were hanging so low 
and it was so cold, and she was all alone on a great 
black sea. It may have seemed so hopeless a task to 
her that she just gave it up — my poor Alicia ! ” 

Yes, she just gave it up. 



THE BRAKE^BEAM RIDER. 



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-.HI 




THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


We were doing a little switching at a small station 
not ten miles from the gray stone that marks the 
boundary line between Utah and Nevada. That day 
would have been a good one on which to “ lay up,” for 
there was a sand-terror hard at work along the line. 
Any brakeman on that particular division will tell you 
what it means to switch cars in a sand-terror ; but as 
you may not meet such a man — they generally die 
young, anyway — I will remark right here that it means 
a tough time and a good deal of swearing. There is a 
sense of continually having to brace yourself up against 
something, and that something is a strong, dry wind 
that pelts you with small hot shot from the desert. If 
you are in a caravan on the Sahara, you can turn your 
back to the sand-storm and let it howl as it will, or 
you can lie down and cover your face ; but what are 
you to do when you have to run along the side of a 
railroad-track and make signals to an engineer who can- 
not see more than forty feet ahead of him in the storm, 

203 


204 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


and does not care a brass button whether or not he 
crushes the life out of you when you run between the 
cars to make a coupling ? And then there is that other 
horror — making a flying switch, while you stand on top 
of a box-car, in the teeth of the “ terror,” with your 
eyes and mouth full of sand and your whiskers as dry 
and prickly as a lot of cactus-spines. Yes, that is 
what it means, and it means a good deal more if you 
happen to have a big, bellowing bull of a conductor to 
curse you if you make a miss in coupling or cut out a 
car that ought to be left in the train. 

I was glad, you may be sure, when we were through 
handling those empties at that Satan’s hole of a station 
on the desert, and there was a clear stretch of thirty 
miles to the next place where there was any more 
switch-work to be done. As the train started, I jumped 
on a “ flat,” behind a box-car, the better to avoid the 
wind, which by this time seemed to have half the desert 
in its teeth. There were lying on the flat-car a long 
iron smoke-stack and a furnace that were going to 
Virginia City. I saw a boot sticking out of the end of 
the big pipe, and I knew at once that boot had in it 
the foot of a tramp who was beating his way west- 
ward. 

“ Come out of that ! ” I shouted, in a harsher tone 
than I really meant to use, for I have always had at 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


205 


least a grain of pity for train-jumpers, unless they are 
too soggy with rum to deserve kindness at my hands. 

But the man in the smoke-stack did not come out. 
So I laid hold upon the protruding boot, and jerked it 
so hard that it came off the foot, and I fell against the 
furnace, giving my elbow a bad whack upon the iron. 
This elbow knock made me pitiless for the time, and I 
pulled and pushed the poor fellow until I had him off 
the train, which was slowly moving away from the 
station. He was dressed in a dingy blue suit, and had 
a very hungry and mournful look. Somehow, I fan- 
cied, as I thrust him off — none too gently — that he re- 
sembled me. It might be that he was several years 
younger, but he had my nose and eyes, and his build 
was about the same, while his hair was fully as light. 

“ If it hadn’t been for that elbow knock,” said I, as 
I threw the fellow’s boot after him into the desert, “ I 
would have let him stay on. It wouldn’t have cost me 
anything — his riding in the smoke-stack ; and wander- 
ing about in a storm like this is hardly the thing for a 
white man, especially with a very black night coming 
on.” 

The day loses itself very quickly in a sand-storm, and 
before the train had run many miles farther it was quite 
dark. 

We were at Bishop’s Station, and the wind had died 


2o6 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


down a bit. I had just remarked to the head-brake- 
man how cool it was getting, when he said : 

“ There’s a tramp layin’ up on top o’ that cattle-car. 
Go an’ fire him off while I look out for the switch.” 

I did as I was ordered. 

“ Eh ! Why, you’re the same man I hauled out of 
the smoke-stack back at Desert ! ” I exclaimed, as my 
lantern lighted up the brown features of the tramp. 
“ Where the did you come from ? ” 

“ Oh, I got on again,” said my train-jumper, his face 
as mournful as ever. 

“Well, you’ll go off this time for good,” I said, 
firmly ; and off he went into the darkness by the side of 
the freight-shed. 

As the train pulled out, I stood on the platform, 
lantern in hand, ready to jump upon the rear step of 
the caboose when it should go by. There was a heavy 
straining of the engine, a clattering of loose brakes, a 
slow grinding of the wheels on the rails, and all the 
other noises that a heavy freight- train makes in getting 
under way. There was a bulging furniture-car in the 
middle of the train, and, as it went by, I saw, crouch- 
ing down upon the brake-beam, my hungry-looking 
train-jumper. Now, any man who will ride on a brake- 
beam forces a certain sort of admiration from me in 
spite of myself, no matter how he may irritate me in 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


207 


Other ways. The dare-devil manner in which the 
brake-beam rider stretches out on his narrow perch be- 
tween the wheels and goes gliding along, with his body 
not two feet from the ground, his hands griping what- 
ever he can get hold of — and that is next to nothing — 
always commands my respect. The light of my lantern 
flashed upon the man’s face, but he did not cower. 
He only smiled and called out : 

“ Rough sort of a Pullman berth, isn’t it ? ” 

I said nothing and sprang upon the caboose. He 
could have his ride on the brake-beam if he wanted it, 
and heaven help him. 

“ Letter for you, Tom,” said the conductor, as I went 
in. “ I got it back there at the station.” 

The missive was from my mother, who wrote from 
the dear old Vermont home that Joe — my own brother 
Joe — was on his way West and would reach Humboldt 
by the eighteenth. Although I had weeks before re- 
ceived a letter stating this intention on Joe’s part, 
the news of his starting came to me as a sort of 
surprise. 

“ Humboldt — the eighteenth ! Why, this is the 
eighteenth,” I said to myself. “ The letter has been 
delayed. Well, at any rate, we will get to Humboldt 
to-night and Brother Joe will, no doubt, come in 
on the nine-fifteen express, half an hour behind us.” 


2o8 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


Humboldt was the end of the run, and they knew 
that Joe could find me there. 

I had to go forward in the dark and take up a position 
near the engine. The chill air of the evening, as we 
rushed through it, seemed to cut to the bone, but the 
sand-storm — thank the fates ! — had subsided. I had 
put on a heavy coat, and, lantern in hand, I had made 
my way carefully over the swiftly moving cars. We 
were on a long down-grade, and the train always went 
at top speed on that part of the run. Seated on the 
brake-handle of the forward car, I thought of Brother 
Joe and wondered how he would look after all the 
years we had lived apart. They had told me in their 
letters from home that he had grown up to be the liv- 
ing picture of myself in the days before I had wan- 
dered away from the old roof-tree. Now, I had always 
fancied that few people I had met resembled me. 
There was that train-jumper. Yes, he was one of the 
few. Where was he bound ? Was there a brother to 
meet him at the end of his journey ? Doubtless not. 
Why would men go wandering up and down the face 
of the earth in the aimless fashion of these railroad 
tramps ? It might be that there was pleasure to be 
derived from the reckless, happy-go-lucky life after all. 
But in the case of my friend on the brake-beam — what 
joy was he experiencing then ? Very little, you may be 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


209 


sure. The cold air was piercing his thinly-clothed form, 
stretched out there on the hard beam. His benumbed 
hands were grasping the cold iron rod, while the dust, 
caught up by the whirling train, was choking his throat 
and filling his eyes and nostrils. His teeth were play- 
ing rat-tat-tat with each other, and his limbs were 
chilled to a log-like stiffness. Without witnessing any 
of his torture, I knew what he was suffering almost as 
well as though I were in his place, and, hardened 
brake-twister though I was, my heart went out to the 
poor devil. Possibly he might have felt just a stray 
bit of comfort, after all, had he known of my sym- 
pathy, but I do not suppose he had the slightest no- 
tion in the world that there was anybody on that train 
who cared a copper whether his bed were hard or soft, 
or that his flesh were warm or cold. 

As if he had gone suddenly daft, that engineer of 
ours brought the train up with a jerk by throwing on 
the “ automatic,” and at the same time nearly throw- 
ing me off the car into the ditch. I grasped my brake- 
handle to save myself a fall, and in that instant an 
awful yell rang out above the rumbling of the train — 
such a yell as one instinctively knows to mean death. 
That blood-thirsty engineer — if what I say of him 
sounds too severe, remember that brakemen are always 
waiting for an excuse to condemn engineers — had be- 

14 


210 


THE BE A HE BEAM RIDER, 


come frightened at some shadow across the track and 
had slackened speed with a jerk and killed the brake- 
beam rider ! The slayer did not hear the shriek, and 
as, of course, the shadow on the track was only a 
shadow, he was letting his iron beast out again when 
I made a desperate signal and he hauled up short. 
When the train had stopped, I did not give the brute 
in the cab the satisfaction of knowing that he had 
killed a man, but ran back and held my lantern up, so 
that I could find what I would have given much not to 
have found. Of course I did find it, and then I ran 
back to the caboose. 

“ Dead, is he ? the conductor said. “ Well, he can’t 
get away then, and he’ll be there when Flanagan and 
his men go out on their hand-car in the morning. But, 
hold on ; I guess you’d better throw him over to one 
side of the track and pile some boards and rocks over 
him to keep off the coyotes.” 

Bill — the other brakeman — and myself, carried out 
the un-Christian commands. It was all done in a few 
minutes, and our train nearly made up the lost time 
before it reached Cow Creek, where we asked the 
station-agent to tell Flanagan, the foreman of that 
section, where he would find the body next day. 

My Brother Joe did not reach Humboldt by the 
night-express, though I was waiting for him when it 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


2II 


came in. I laid off the next two days and nights, wait- 
ing for him at Humboldt ; but, strangely enough, he 
did not come. He was now three days overdue, and 
I grew anxious. My conductor growled so about my 
staying off my run that I thought I had best not lose 
another day, and so went to work, though with little 
cheer. At Cow Creek, on my next run out, I saw 
Flanagan. 

“ Oi plantid your thramp in foine stoyle,” said he ; 
“ rist his sowl. The carriner tuk our wurrud fur it, 
an’ didn’t hould no inkist at all. I was chafe-moorner 
an’ the coolies was the pall-bearers.” 

“ Where did you bury him ? ” was my not very in- 
terested query, for I had something heavier on my 
mind now than train- jumpers, dead or living. 

“ W’y, right besides the thrack, where yez foinded 
’im. An’ I made ’im a cross out o’ two paces o’ fince- 
boord, an’ he slapes as sound there as anybody cud 
who niver had no mass sid for his sowl, God rist ’im. 
An’ nobody cud foind out ’is name, at all, from any- 
thin’ that was on him ; but he’s got the howly cross 
above ’im annyhow, an’ that’s a blissin’, an’ all that 
Jim Flanagan cud do fur ’im.” 

When our train had run down the line a few miles 
beyond Cow Creek, I exchanged places with Bill, and 
sat atop of a box-car, with my feet hanging over the 


212 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


side, while I thought of Brother Joe and wondered 
what mischance had prevented his coming. That I 
should worry about him was natural, for he was only 
a boy in my estimation, and was, as I believed, unused 
to the ways of the big world. Then, too, he was being 
sent to me in trust by our mother — the tenderest 
mother who ever lived — and I was expected to “ look 
out ” for him as best I could while he should be in the 
rough West, and to send him home again as soon as 
might be. I knew the boy had sketched a future of 
purple and gold as the result of his journey across the 
plains, and, in my elder-brotherly wisdom, I had smiled 
at the dreams of the sanguine fortune-seeker. Just 
now, however, I could not smile. Where was Brother 
Joe.? Brother Joe! Why, bless his heart I was not 
he the little rascal whom I managed to get out of that 
watermelon-stealing scrape, when Farmer Lundy would 
have thrashed the life out of him ? And, looking further 
back into the old farm life, I asked myself who, but 
dear little tow-headed Joe, did I use to carry on my back 
across the creek, down by the old barn ? What a smile 
he had when a six-year-old I How his big blue eyes 
used to stick out when I told him those wonderful 
stories about giants and dragons ; and how he used to 
love to watch me milk the cows. Sitting up on the 
big freight-car, its top grimy with cinders from the 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER, 


213 


engine, I milked the cows again. And the hills beyond 
the desert grew out of perspective and finally melted 
away, and in their place I saw the hazy stretch of 
woodland so often seen on my farm-life horizon ; and 
right here, on the white desert, over which the heat 
was quivering, appeared, for a fleeting moment, the 
waving wheat-field and green-leaved orchard of my 
old Vermont home. Just there, by the gate, was 
where Joe stood when I bade them all good-bye, and 
the big tears were running down his red-apple face, and 
he was moaning forth a plaintive wail that I should take 
him with me to the West, for I was his own Tom and 
he said he could not let me go. Yes, it was just there, 
by the gate — just there — and up out of the green, at 
that very spot, was thrust a small, rude cross, breaking 
the spell and bringing the white desert back again, like 
a flash of blinding light. Why, that was the cross that 
Flanagan had stuck at the head of the dead tramp, 
whose face had borne such a striking resemblance to 
my own — as close a resemblance, perhaps, as my 
Brother Joe bore to me, now that he had grown to 
manhood. Then, for an instant, my heart ceased to 
beat, and I stared blankly at the cross and the little 
mound of earth on which its shadow fell. Great God ! 
Could it be ? He had left home in as good trim as any 
young man might need to set out. He had a passage 


214 


THE BRAKE’BEAM RIDER. 


ticket to Humboldt and a well-filled purse, so the letter 
had said. But, ah ! he was young and he was inno- 
cent, and there were harpies and fiends by the way. 
Many a young man, who had started forth as well 
equipped and as light of heart as he, had never reached 
the journey’s end, and here had I, in my blindness, for 
no good reason whatsoever, blocked the way of one 
whose face was a reflection of my own and had become 
an accomplice in his murder — for I might almost have 
known he would meet his death when I saw him forced, 
as it were, to the brake-beam. I fixed my eyes upon 
the cross, and, as it grew smaller to my sight, it grew 
larger in my thought. I knew no peace. One ray of 
light pierced the gloom. If Brother Joe had been due 
at Humboldt on the eighteenth, by express, how could 
he have been on the freight-train that arrived there the 
same night ? Against this was weighed the torturing 
thought that the letter was full of mistaken notions as 
to times and places, and, now that I looked at it again, 
I saw clearly that if he had left home, as was stated, 
on the twenty-fifth, he should have been in Humboldt 
on the eleventh, and he had not been there at all. 
Then I went through the whole chapter again, revolv- 
ing each passage of it in my wearied brain, and one 
part of it seemed to stand out more strongly than all 
the rest — my strange bond of brotherly sympathy felt 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


215 


for the man while I sat upon the car in the dark and 
cold, and he was down in that death-tempting place 
under the furnitufe-car. I knew little of psychology, 
and yet I thought it must have been revealed to me in 
a misty way at that hour that the mournful train-jumper 
was no stranger. My brain was in a whirl, and the 
ugliest thoughts would crowd themselves to the top, so 
that, with it all, I was fairly beside myself. 

We were at Red Buttes before nightfall, and there 
we were to pass the west-bound express. The thought 
of that desert-grave and the terrible meaning it had for 
me did not — no, nor ten times the thought could not — 
prevent me from scanning, with intense eagerness, the 
faces of the passengers who thronged into the station 
for supper, for Red Buttes was marked “ S ” on the 
time-card. But, of course, I was doomed to disap- 
pointment. The passengers came and went, as 



hearted as you please, while I stood on the platform 
with a heart of lead and cursed them for their gayety. 
Yes, I cursed, for I was a rough man in those days, 
and they had no right, I argued, to be cheerful when I 
was so downcast. I went back to my train, stamping 
the platform with my heavy boots, as I went along, and 
continuing my profanity. 

It was with much impatience that I sought out 
Flanagan on our return to Cow Creek. 


2i6 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


“You say there was nothing on the body of the — the 
tramp you buried, by which he could be identified ? ” I 
asked, eagerly. 

“ Niver annything at all.” 

“ Are you sure there were no letters — no papers — 
not a scrap of ” 

“ Hould on — they was ; but they was nothin’ betune 
the kivers uv it that showed annything at all,” said the 
honest foreman. 

“ Covers of what ” 

“ Why, the note-book, to be sure. Oi told yez about 
that befoor, didn’t Oi ? ” 

“ No ; let me see it at once.” And I followed him 
with impatient step, as he hurried to his cottage, near 
the station. 

“ Here it is,” he said, taking down a red note-book 
from a shelf, an’ if yez kin foind annything in it that 
tells who the thramp was, ye’ll do better thin iver ould 
Flanagan kin, or anny one else around here, for the 
malther o’ that.” 

I glanced eagerly through the book. There were 
some rows of figures, a memorandum as to certain 
routes of travel between New York and Council Bluffs, 
a number of blank pages, and then this, written in 
pencil, and dated at Cheyenne a week back : 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


217 


Dear Brother Tom : A fool and his money ! I met 
some men on the train who induced me to bet all I had 
on a card game. It was a swindling trick, of course, 
and I lost everything. 1 might have gone through 
after all, had not one of the villains stolen my railroad 
ticket. The conductor put me oif here, and I suppose 
I must remain until I can obtain some money. Can 
you send me fifty dol 

Then pride had made the point of the pencil run 
across the page in heavy lines again and again. The 
writing was Joe’s. He had never finished the letter. 
He had preferred to beat his way to Humboldt, like a 
common “ train-jumper,” rather than to call on any one 
for aid. 

“ Oi tould yez they was nothin’ in it,” said Flanagan, 
reaching for his pipe, an’ now ye see Oi know o’ what 
I was talkin’. Yer conducthor is wavin’ fur yez. Will 
yez lave me the book ? ” , 

But I thrust it into my pocket. I tried to say some- 
thing to Flanagan, but there was that in my throat 
which forbade speech ; and so with leaden feet I made 
my way to the train. 

It was the wrong time of year for flowers, and there 
never are many at Humboldt, but I gathered all I 
could find and took them next day to that lone grave 


2i8 


THE BRAKE-BEAM RIDER. 


by the railroad track. That was after I had undergone 
the worst of all the hours of my life — the hour in which 
I wrote the letter to mother, which followed my tele- 
gram. 

But Joe does not sleep in the desert now. He lies 
under the old elm on the hill-side ; and there is a white 
shaft of marble above his head, instead of the wooden 
cross. 


ON THE CALIENTE TRAIL. 



ON THE CAEIENTE TRAIL. 


In their weary journey across the barren mesa the 
travelers had suddenly come to a halt. What they had 
dreaded from the time they had left the stage-road 
station and set out on the trail had come to pass and 
they were sore distressed. Bad water and the insuf- 
ferable heat of the desert had stretched Big Bunster 
out on his blankets, and he was talking about his 
mother and asking the others to break the news to her 
gently. 

Bunster had not felt well when they left Flagstaff, 
but, like the well-meaning young idiot that he was, he 
persisted in facing the dangers of the trail with the 
others. So, as he grew less, steady on his burro and 
the fever took a firmer hold upon his big, lazy body, 
his head drooped lower over the pommel, and Jim 
Yost, the guide and the only man of the whole six of 
them who really knew what danger the big fellow was 
in, determined to call a halt. 

“ I don’t want to see him die in his saddle,” Jim 

221 


222 


ON THE CALIENTE TRAIL. 


said in a whisper to Zach Rawlins, “ and unless we kin 
git him inter more comfortable shape, he’ll croak afore 
sundown.” 

So they paused in the shade of a mass of rocks, piled 
up in the fashion the Titans had of doing things in the 
days when the Grand Canon of the Colorado was young. 
And they were mightily glad to rest there, for to be 
stared out of countenance all day long by such a sun 
as only the great desert knows, is enough to drive a 
man a long way toward a shady spot. 

Big Bunster felt easier, but he knew he would die, he 
said, unless he could get a sip of decent water. He 
saw clearly enough that that was impossible, and so, 
in his lazy way, he was letting go of the strings of life. 

“ Don’t wait for me to die, boys,” he said ; “ keep 
along on your way, or you will all drop down as I have 
done. I always was rather slow, and I want to take 
my own time dying. Don’t stop for me.” 

Then he looked up into Zach Rawlins’ face and smiled 
one of the queerest, ghastliest smiles Zach had ever seen. 
And then Zach, who was the best and truest friend Big 
Bunster had ever had, stuck his heels in the sand, and 
said it was a beastly shame that such a good fellow 
should come to such an end. He wanted to know why 
their miserable guide had led them so far out of the 
way, why they were here, forty miles from nowhere. 


ON THE CALIENTE TRAIL. 


223 


and why the guide had promised to find a spring when 
he had known nothing of its existence, and why, in the 
name of all that was holy, something could not be done. 

“Wal, yer needn’t git so cursed riled,” rasped out 
the grim Yost. “ Nuthin’ kin be did now. We can’t 
go no further, or your man’ll drop dead as that snake- 
skin thar. As it is, he stands some show. We’ll strike 
Caliente Trail afore dusk, when it gits cooler. It’s 
right over thar,” and the rugged Yost pointed a knotty 
forefinger across a white expanse, over which lines of 
heat were quivering as if the very air writhed under the 
pitiless fire from on high. 

“ What good will it do Bunster, if we do get there ? ” 
whispered some one. 

“ Good ? ” returned the guide ; “ why, thar’s water 
four mile from that air trail — ef we kin git down to it.” 

“ Get down to it ! Of course we will,” spoke up 
Rawlins. “ Cheer up, old man,” he said, soothingly, 
to the parched Bunster whose tongue was out and 
whose eyes were staring across the plain toward Ca- 
liente Trail ; “ there’s water over there, and you shall 
have a good drink, my boy.” 

“Water — yes, I see it ; it’s sort of gray-blue, isn’t it ? 
Why, there’s a great lake — what a sight ! ” and the 
thirst-plagued man stared at the picture his distorted 
vision had conjured up ; and, drawing in his tongue, he 


224 


ON THE CALIENTE TRAIL. 


pressed his cracked lips together, as if glueing them to 
the brim of a glass full of the sparkling liquid, for which 
he would have given anything he possessed for one 
soul-satisfying swallow. His torture, and that of the 
friend who watched over him while he lay tossing on 
his blankets, was allayed to a degree a few hours later, 
when the fierce sun repented and the night stole on 
slowly. As the evening air fanned his brow, Rawlins, 
riding by the side of his sick friend, made light of the 
day’s mishaps and even managed a joke about Big Bun- 
ster’s burro being smaller than its rider, which joke 
seemed very near the truth, though it lacked heartiness. 

The little caravan made its way to Caliente Trail and 
along it to one of the outer walls of the great canon, 
where it halted for the night. 

Very early in the morning, before the sun had ceased 
his repentance, two of the men slung their canteens to 
their sides and started for the river ; though Yost, after 
they had gone, said : “ It’s even chances ’bout them 
gittin’ water — they mought and they moughtn’t. Them 
air canon walls is mighty steep, but thar may be a place 
to git down som’ers along thar.” 

Clearly the sun had determined to be as wicked as 
ever ; and when his scorching, blistering rays reached 
the little camp on Caliente Trail, the men soon sought 
the shelter of the rocks. Rawlins made Bunster as 


ON THE CALIENTE TRAIL. 


22 $ 


comfortable as was possible ; but there was very little 
comfort to be enjoyed. The sick man wailed for water, 
and his purple face was an ugly sight for his friend to 
gaze upon, while he vigorously fanned with his hat the 
dry, hot air above his brow. 

Hours passed. “ Will they never come ? ” thought 
Rawlins ; “ why did I not go myself ? It was because 
I thought he might die while I was gone, and I wanted 
to stick by him to the end. Still, I should have gone 
— I should have gone.” 

Another hour dragged its reluctant way along. It 
was nearly noon. There they were at last — the water- 
bearers. But why walked they so slowly ? No doubt 
they were tired. Yes, they were tired and worn — 
nearly exhausted, in fact ; their clothes were in tatters, 
and they were shamefaced and cowed — for they brought 
back no water. They had started from the walled-in 
stream with full canteens ; but the ascent of the canon 
side had been so toilsome, the heat so intense, and 
their thirst so great, that they had drank every 
drop. 

Ugly glances shot from Zach Rawlins’ eyes at the 
recreant ones. His blood was up. He would go down 
to the stream, though it were guarded by fiery dragons, 
and he would bring back a canteen full of water and 
steep the heartless ones in their shame. Yes, Big 
IS 


226 


ON THE CALIENTE TRAIL. 


Bunster should have the all-needful draught, if he had 
to go through fire to get it. And he did go through 
fire ; for it proved useless for Yost to tell him that a 
journey down to the water’s edge in the cool of the 
morning and one made at midday were two very dif- 
ferent things to undertake. He jerked the canteen 
strap over his shoulder and strode quickly away over 
the baked mesa, under the burning sun, and soon be- 
gan the descent. From one great step of the rough, 
natural stairway to another he went, and at last he 
gained a point where he could look off and down into the 
canon’s dark depths. Like a sinuous piece of steel, the 
the river ran its way far below him, a strip of it visible 
here, another there, and still another beyond, so that it 
seemed as if the stream burrowed through high, rocky 
barriers. Rawlins paused not to note the brilliant 
patches of color along the face of the great escarpment, 
and the sharply sketched chiar-oscuro that marked the 
naked grandeur of the scene made no impress. He 
only saw, running swiftly at the base of the great walls 
which hemmed it in from human hand, the water for 
which the friend of his youth lay dying. The way down 
was difficult. He was almost stifled by the heat ; he 
was tortured by an intolerable thirst ; his clothing was 
torn by jagged rocks ; he was struck at by rattlesnakes, 
and, as if all this were not enough, one of the soles of his 


ON THE CALIENTE TRAIL, 


227 


boots had become so warped by the heat, and so split 
by the rocks as to make his steps unsafe. 

In a fever of excitement, he.finally reached the river’s 
edge. He threw himself down by the brink and eagerly 
gulped the sparkling water. Then he filled the canteen 
and darted up the rocks. Fleet as had been his descent 
to the base of the canon wall, it had taken him nearly 
two hours to make it. It had been hard enough coming 
down, but now came the real work. So steep was the 
rocky escarpment that its ascent was one of great effort 
and peril, even for a strong man at early dawn, but for 
a weak man, at two in the afternoon, it was a fearful 
task. 

How intensely hot it was there on the canon-side ! 
How scorchingly, unbearably hot ! And yet he bore 
it. Though his whole body reeked with perspiration, 
and his muscles were tightly drawn under the great 
strain, yet he paused only to pick his way among the 
rocks. He could not go up the way he had come 
down, for it was too steep. 

Within an hour the demon Thirst had seized upon 
him again, clutching with fiery fingers at his throat, until 
it seemed almost closed. So quickly were the bodily 
juices licked up by the sun, under such tremendous 
effort, that his very marrow seemed to have lost its 
fluid portion, and his tongue to have turned to a chip. 


228 


ON THE CALIENTE TRAIL. 


Now he was in the shadow of a great rock. How 
grateful was the shade ! He paused there for a mo- 
ment. He scolded himself for his loss of time, but he 
felt that moment was one spent in heaven. 

In passing through a great split in a rock the can- 
teen strap was cut, and down fell the precious vessel, 
with its still more precious contents. The stopper flew 
from its place and a plash of water steamed up from the 
burning rock on which it fell. Madly he jerked up the 
canteen. Thank God, only a little water had been 
wasted, and yet, he reflected, as he replaced the cork, 
he would have given worlds to have sipped what had 
fallen. But he hastened on. The warped and split 
boot-sole finally cracked clean through, and he could 
feel the gridiron heat of the rocks upon his naked flesh, 
for his stocking was quickly worn away. 

It was now so hot that the rattlesnakes did not ven- 
ture forth upon the rocks, so there was no longer any 
danger from them. The real danger now, as he viewed 
it, was that he would be able but a short time longer to 
keep the neck of the canteen from his lips. The water 
had become warm, and yet it was his one source of re- 
vivification to place the flat side of the canteen against 
his sun-scorched face. This was at once a delight and 
a torture, for while the can cooled his flesh, the delicious 
huggle-guggle of the water nearly drove him mad. 


ON THE CALIENTE TRAIL. 


229 


Thrice he stopped, uncorked the canteen and raised it 
to his lips, and then, pushing it from him by a mighty 
effort, he dashed wildly on. Soon he came to a place 
where the ascent was almost perpendicular, and where 
the heat was so stifling as almost to close his nostrils. 
The way up was lined with cactus-scrubs, whose spines 
pierced his hands like red-hot needles when he grasped 
at something by which to haul himself up. The little 
lizards that darted into the patches of shade seemed to 
mock him, and his wistful gaze could be torn from the 
canteen only when it was absolutely necessary for him 
to see his way clear. 

“ What is his thirst to mine ? ” he moaned, as for a 
fourth time he uncorked the canteen. “ He is lying in 
the shade, and his brow is fanned by kindly hands, 
while I — I am burning.” 

Then the swollen, purple face of Bunster rose up 
before him, and he shoved the cork into the mouth of 
the canteen with a spasmodic effort that seemed almost 
superhuman. Again he toiled on — slowly now, for his 
strength seemed almost spent. 

******* 

It was dreary waiting up at the camp for the return 
of the water-bearer. Yost gazed for hours over the 
white ground in the direction of the canon, and, at last. 


230 


ON THE CALIENTE TRAIL. 


he grimly gave up Zach Rawlins as a lost man, though 
he did not say so to his less experienced friends of the 
camp. 

“ No chance fur ’em when their feet slip on the rocks 
over them air cliffs or when a rattlesnake nips ’em 
’hove the boot-top. He’s gone for sartin,” muttered 
the guide. “ We’ll have to bury the big ’un afore 
nightfall — fur he’s ’most gone — an’ then put back fur 
the stage-station afore we all drop. It’s just hell— this 
desert life, an’ I’ve ’bout got my fill on it.” 

Then the ghost of a man, with tatters of clothing 
hanging from his form, darted into view around the 
rocks. Yost cursed the on-comer for a fool for running 
so hard under the burning sun. His legs seemed very 
unsteady, for he reeled as he ran. It was fully a 
minute before the guide or any of them could realize 
that the advancing form was that of Rawlins, and in 
that minute the scarecrow figure had reached the 
couch where Big Bunster lay, and, uncorking the can- 
teen, had shoved the neck of it into the nearly uncon- 
scious man’s mouth. 

“ Drink, old man ! It’s water — good, pure water ! 
Drink hearty, and God bless you ! ” came in thin, 
sepulchral tones from between the blackened lips of 
the ghostly one. “ Drink, drink ! ” 

And the water bearer fell beside his comrade. Great 


ON THE CALIENTE TRAIL. 


231 


throbs shook his frame. His breath failed. His eyes 
became glazed and his dust-covered head, which had 
hours ago lost its covering, sank down upon the sand. 
But in the rigid clasp of death his hand held the can- 
teen to his comrade’s lips. 

“Knocked out by the sun,” was Yost’s comment; 
“ but he brought back a full canteen. Wall, I’ve seed 
lots on ’em, but I never seed one with his grit ! ” 

They buried him by the rocks and wrote his name 
on a stake, thrust into the sand at his head. And 
Bunster, who was coming out of death’s shadow, looked 
on and mourned. 

That very evening came jingling along the trail a 
train of burros, led by a thick-set Mexican. There was 
plenty of good water in his casks, and plenty of good 
food in his packs, and the travelers ate and drank and 
went their way toward Flagstaff in the Mexican’s com- 
pany. And the sound of the tinkling bells on the 
burros’ necks echoed from the rock under which Zach 
Rawlins lay and mocked his dull, cold ear. 

“ I’ve seed lots on ’em,” repeated Yost, as he told 
the tale to the Mexican, “ I’ve seed lots on ’em, but I 
never seed one with his grit ! ” 


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LOLITA. 


There had been only three weeks of it, and then he 
had been called away to the city for a whole fortnight. 
Roberta wanted to know if that sort of thing were not 
just a little too hard for a newly-made wife. Of course, 
there were letters, sometimes two of them in a day, but 
that awful business would not let him cut short his 
stay in town. There was a will to be broken. Uncle 
Harry had been out of his mind toward the end of his 
earthly career, and had not done the right thing by his 
nephew. If the money came, it would mean the buy- 
ing of the new vineyard which the disgusted English- 
man had planted alongside their forty acres, and was 
now crazy to get rid of, as America was an outrageous 
sell, you know. Delay might mean the purchase of 
the vineyard by others, and there was not a prettier 
piece of land within miles and miles of Clear Lake. 

Roberta Nash was a city girl, and she enthused over 
the beauties of the lake country in a way that amused 
the natives, while at the same time it pleased them 

235 


236 


LOLITA. 


mightily. Just now, in spite of the depressing fact 
that Ben would not be at home for five whole days, she 
could not help letting the lake entrance her, as it had 
first entranced her when she had taken up life in her 
new home near her husband’s native village, after the 
short wedding journey. 

Sapphire, emerald, gold — gold, emerald, sapphire. 
What a waterscape ! Beyond the broad sweep of water 
the Coast Range made a rugged sky-line, and over 
there to the north the tules made a long streak of gray- 
green. The ducks made black dots where the 
sunlight glimmered strongest upon the water, and 
along the shore the ground was aflame with wild 
poppies. 

It was not enough, that view from the little veranda. 
She must go down near enough to the lake to smell it. 
She put on her flat-crowned straw-hat and struck out 
in a gait that she had learned from the Englishman’s 
daughter. Soon the crisp grass, that crackled under 
foot gave place to green weeds, and she tramped 
through the poppies, by the tule clump and down to 
the sandy shore, lapped by low waves. 

She walked along in her own old gait now, for she 
had forgotten the affected one, and came to where a 
lone pine sent its roots toward the water. The wind 
was moaning and wuthering through the branches, and 


LOLITA. 


237 


its dismal sound made her shiver. A small dark object 
lay just ahead upon the sand. It looked, in the fading 
light, like a cutting from a small tree. Then its outer 
texture showed as that of a little basket, curiously 
woven. Over one end was a red bandana handker- 
chief. Roberta stooped and lifted the bit of cloth, 
starting back as a pin-point wail issued forth from the 
basket. A little black head moved restlessly, two jet- 
black eyes popped open, and two red lips quivered and 
puckered. But the face was almost white, though the 
cheek-bones were Indian, and so were the temples and 
forehead. The mouth opened wonderfully wide, and 
was preparing to give forth a wild Indian whoop, but 
the shadow of a woman fell across the sands. The 
pin-point wail had been enough to bring the mother 
out from the willows, beyond the pine. The whoop 
was smothered upon the woman’s breast, and Roberta, 
standing back, saw that the mother was not at all 
angry, as she had feared. Something else she saw at 
a glance. The woman was very young — a mere girl, 
in fact — and she had white blood in her. 

The wild one answered the questioning gaze, saying, 
“ Yes, I am part white, but I stay with my mother’s 
people, just as this little one does. 

She looked a mother’s look at the child in her arms. 

“ But he is not to be treated as I have been. He is 


238 


LOLITA. 


to have his own. His father promised it long 
ago, when we walked this shore together in the moon- 
light.” 

Roberta shuddered. She, too, had walked by the 
lake with one she loved. But on her side there had 
been trusting faith, while on the wild girl’s side — well, 
may there not have been faith and trust, too ? 

“ I was very happy then. The sun danced on the 
lake, the birds sang gay songs. The songs are not gay 
now, and the sun burns red. He was to meet me here, 
but he has not come. I have walked all round the 
lake, but I cannot find him.” 

There was something hard in Roberta’s throat when 
she asked, “ Have you been long away ? ” 

“ Yes, nearly a year. My people went over beyond 
the Blue Lakes and into the Mendocino hills. The 
child came to me there. I was happy with him, but 
he is a white man, his father is a white man, and he 
should not live with our people. He would curse his 
mother when he grew older, and that would kill me. 
And then my people would make pain for him. A 
white man cannot go in the sweathouse. 1 cannot go 
myself — there is white blood in me. I would to God 
there were not, for it has made me so unhappy. It 
made me unhappy until I met him that was to be my 
husband. It had been the dream of my life to have a 


LOLITA. 


239 


white husband, and he was good and noble and true. 
It must be that he is ill somewhere that he cannot 
come.” 

The child wailed again, and, chanting soft and low, 
the girl walked up and down the sands, Roberta look- 
ing on with a woman’s interest and a woman’s sympa- 
thy. She even followed the brown one toward the 
willow clump and to the little gunny-sack tent she had 
made in the deepest shade. Then she went home, 
with a glad heart, for her husband would never forsake 
her. There was no need for a single foolish fear on 
that point. 

The five days dragged themselves out, but Ben was 
kept away for another three, and these she did not 
see how she could get over. She walked again by the 
lake shore and went to the willows to catch sight of 
the Indian girl and her babe, but the gunny-sacks had 
been taken down and there was only a little beaten 
place on the weeds that showed where the mother and 
child had lain. 

“ She has given up the search for her miserable 
lover, and gone back to her tribe,” said Roberta. 

But the brown one was at that moment on the other 
side of the lake, looking, and looking. 

Then Ben actually did come home, and he brought 
the best of new's. The “ Society for the Destruction 


240 


LOLITA. 


of Coyotes ” was not to have the legacy after all ; it 
was to go to them, and the Englishman’s vineyard was 
as good as theirs. 

“ I feel like singing that Salvation Army song, ‘ Joy, 
Joy, Joy,’” said Ben, after he had waltzed Roberta 
three times around the room and out upon the veranda. 

“ Just see how bright the lake looks,” she cried. 
“ It has been wearing a leaden blue for the past 
week. Isn’t it just awful when it looks so dull and 
dead .? ” 

“ Chromatic aberration, due to causes beyond the 
patient’s control. Wouldn’t have stayed away another 
day for three legacies.” 

And there came several sounds not unlike to the 
drawing of a goose’s foot out of the mud. After which 
Roberta’s face looked pink, and her long lashes 
drooped, for this sort of thing was still new to 
her. 

“ But the strangest thing has happened while you’ve 
been gone,” said she. “ An Indian girl — sort of a 
half-breed, she looks to be— has been prowling around 
the lake looking for a white man who promised to be 
her husband. The poor thing has a little boy baby — 
a cunning little fellow, not much bigger than a kitten. 
I wish you could have seen them.” 

Ben took up one of the coffee-cup flower-pots from 


LOLITA. 


241 


the window-sill, and looked intently at the plant grow- 
ing therein. 

“ Did she tell you her name ? ” 

She did not notice the change in his voice. 

“ Yes — Lolita. Spanish, isn’t it ? Goodness me. 
There goes my China lily. You are getting awfully 
clumsy, Ben.” 

She picked up the fragments of the flower-pot and 
tossed them over the bank near by, and his wonderful 
solicitude for the fate of the lily, badly overdone as it 
was, did not call forth any comment from her. 

Nor did it seem strange that he stayed closely at 
home for the next few days, for he had been away so 
long. But his interest in the vineyard transaction did 
not begin to come up to hers, and he brought in the 
deed in a very un-Ben-like fashion, without one wave 
of triumph. 

It gave Roberta a very bad half hour when she finally 
made up her mind that her husband could retire within 
himself, and that she could not always hope to reach 
him. She had not expected this so soon after the 
church ceremony. But it had come. 

When he saw that she noticed it, he made a quick at- 
tempt to erase the impression it had made. He sent 
to town for a lot of things that he thought would please 

her, and he drove her out in their new carriage. Their 
16 


242 


LOLITA. 


drives were always through the canons and over by 
Big Oaks. 

“ Why don’t you take me along the lake shore ? ” 
she asked one evening. “ You never go there.” 

“ Oh, do you like the smell of dead fish ? Why, I 
thought you said once there was nothing so beautiful 
as Manzanita Canon.” 

“ So I did, but I like the lake, too. And it’s cooler 
there after a warm day.” 

He set his teeth very tight. 

“Very well,” said he. 

They drove along the shore almost to Soda Bay, he 
sitting as silent as if the whole world were not his and 
he had not the best woman on earth for a wife, as he 
should have felt, and as any other newly married man 
would have felt. 

But on the way back he seemed to regain his spirits. 
He managed a little joke at the expense of some 
campers from the city, and they were both laughing 
when they made the turn in the road that brought 
them within sight of the red roof of their cottage. 

Then a brown figure stole out of the gloom with 
something tied to its back. 

“ It’s Lolita. Stop the buggy and let me speak to 
her.” 

Roberta’s voice was full of glad surprise, and she 


LOLITA. 


243 


made a move of the hand as if to pull at the reins 
that lay in his gloved fingers. The Indian girl lifted 
a pinched face and looked straight at the man, with 
big, blazing eyes. Then she stretched out her hands 
and parted her lips to speak. But at that instant a 
heavy cut of the whip made the horse plunge forward. 

“ You’re wrong, Ben — she’s no beggar,” said Roberta, 
stung. 

He said nothing, and they jolted on over the ruts 
and through their gate. 

At breakfast, next morning, he did not look as 
though he had slept, and Roberta, thinking him ill, 
fussed and fidgeted about him, as a new wife will. 

“ What do you think,” he asked abruptly, “ of a trip 
to Santa Barbara ? ” 

“ ’Twould be very nice, but we’re going to buy those 
sheep next Tuesday, and the trip’ll cost a lot of money. 
Why, it’s five hundred miles to Santa Barbara.” 

“ Oh, let the sheep go. We can’t be young always. 
Our wedding journey was unconscionably short, and 
we have more money now. Let’s go down for a few 
months. I believe you said once you’d like to live 
there. If we like it we won’t come back. I dare say 
that’s the way it’ll turn out. Come, let’s get ready.” 

The suddenness of it made her gasp, and the ex- 
travagance of it made her groan. But he was her hus- 


244 


LOLITA. 


band, and all that was left for her to do was to cry a 
little and pack up. 

With their luggage piled around them, they stood 
on the little pier by the lakeside next morning. The 
fussy little steamer, with its air of great importance, 
did a good deal of coughing and puffing in getting 
under way. From the low deck Roberta looked at 
the fading red roof over beyond the tules and the big 
square patch of alfalfa near which it stood, and the 
vineyard, and at the big swing Ben had put up for her. 
She would know later that the place was in an agent’s 
hands to be sold. 

Who was that rushing toward the pier, waving her 
hands throwing her dress into wild disarray 

“ It’s the Indian girl ! ” she cried. “ See, she is 
holding up her baby and shouting to us. I suppose 
she wanted to bid me good-bye. She was awfully 
grateful for the interest I took in her and her child. 

She’s disappointed because the boat left the wharf be- 

# 

fore she got there. How wild she looks, poor thing ! 
How frantically she holds up her child ! Cunning 
little fellow ! Wish I could have a good look at him 
once more. It’s a boy, you know.” 

“ Is it ? ” he asked, taking a cigar from his pocket. 

“Yes. I do wish I could have seen him once more. 
I’ll hardly know him when we come back.” 


LOLITA. 


245 


He scanned the shore with a rather indifferent 
“ good-by-for-all-time ” look. 

“ No ; I dare say you’ll not,” he said, lighting his 
cigar. 













THE MAKING OF HER. 





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THE MAKING OF HER. 


In her set it was not fashionable to have feelings. 
Any display of feeling was looked down upon as a 
manifestation of childish innocence. As for ardor of 
the good old style, that was positively vulgar. They 
had dabbled in the Unknowable Hazy, and were all 
of the cult, of course, and high-rounders, too. They, 
chewed Ibsen, mangled Emerson and had words of 
approval for Browning. If you go to Boston and look 
about you will find such girls there. They do not wear 
corsets and they cling closely to cremation. Their 
lack of fervor is due to many things. Chiefly it is the 
reaction from soulful aestheticism. That reaction has 
made enthusiasm a drug in the Boston market. 

Enough of prologue, now for the story : 

Eva Donahower — Eh-va, please, not Ee-va — had 
passed through a lower boarding-school, a higher 
boarding-school, a female academy, a music conserva- 
tory, a course of classics, another of Tolstoi, a severe 

249 


250 


THE MAKING OF HER. 


round of botany, a delightful whirl of cosmogony, and 
now she knew everything. 

Self-contained, tranquil, calm, reserved and capable 
of walking the chalk-mark of absolute propriety without 
getting a bit off her balance, she was the leader of her 
set — the coolest, least impulsive girl that ever looked 
through eyeglasses. 

What good it could possibly do for such a girl to 
make a tour through the crude, raw West no one of 
her set could imagine. She knew more about the 
country than she could possibly learn from traveling 
through it. Why did she not stay at home and con 
Ibsen ? That is exactly what she would have done 
but that a ridiculously enthusiastic aunt wanted to 
go to California and had dragged her along to talk to. 
How she should be bored by the dear, foolish, gush- 
ing old creature, to whom syntax meant as much or as 
little as psychics, and creamery was every bit as good 
as crematory. She meant well, but she never pro- 
nounced anything’s name right. 

They went in one of those special vestibule-train 
excursion parties where you buy a book of tickets that 
sees you through everything as neatly as the minute 
hand goes round the clock. To her the velvet and 
mahogany fittings of the car interior were stupidly 
gaudy, and the big mirrors glared at her everywhere. 


THE MAKING OF HER. 


251 


As for the books in the stock library, they were the 
selection of a common mind, for there was nothing 
about the Vedas there and the “Stones of Venice” 
had also been left out. 

But to look at her, seated so placidly there in the 
Pullman, turning the leaves of the Atlantic.^ you would 
not have seen that anything bored her. She kept 
Auntie quiet by telling her that the high mesas over 
which they were passing were explored by Cabeza de 
Vaca in 1537, who was followed not long afterward by 
Don Francisco de Coronado, Governor of New Galicia, 
who discovered the Pueblos and Pimas ; that the 
Aztecs, that were so insisted upon by the guide-book, 
were in reality a mythical race ; that the monolithic 
cereus giganteus, which common people called the giant 
cactus, had ligneous fascicles, vegetated vigorously 
during a portion of the year and then took a rest ; also 
that it was botanically allied to the grossulariacecB, 
vulgarly known as gooseberries and currants ; that the 
agave Mexicana was the true century plant, though its 
blooming only once in a hundred years was a fairy 
tale, and lots more like that, which had a somnolent 
effect on her relative. The dear old creature would 
persist, however, in throwing up her hands and gush- 
ing over some tall candle-like stalks of vegetation that 
blossomed out at the ends in beautiful sprays ; but she 


252 


THE MAKING OF HER. 


calmed down a little when she was informed these 
were only some species of the yucca whipplei, whose 
flowers were campanulate and inodorous, and w'hich 
always grew in a dry, sandy soil and at considerable 
altitudes. 

All this dispassionate talk had its results. It awed 
the passengers, for one thing. As Miss Eva stuck her 
little labels on the botanical, geological and ethnologi- 
cal curiosities seen along the way and they were put 
on the shelf, so to speak, for the inspection of every- 
body, she became quite the person of the whole 
party. 

With all the coolness of the agnostic she told of the 
sun-worshipping savages and of those who bowed down 
to wood and stone. And she never even smiled when 
Auntie asked whether such or such a strange plant 
were “ ’digenous ” or “indigenous.” 

At Cactus Springs — a most barren and God-forsaken 
place — the train was side-tracked. This was by arrange- 
ment with the excursion managers, to whom the stop 
meant a lump sum, as the owner of the springs, which 
were a recent discovery, was anxious to have tourists 
make their acquaintance. For fear the water would 
not taste badly enough to leave a strong impression on 
their minds the man who had his money at stake on 
them had dosed two of the springs with asafcetida and 


THE MAKING OF HER. 


253 


had stuck a half-burned gum-boot under the rocks at 
the bottom of the other. 

Miss Eva did not like the water, though some of the 
passengers declared it was equal to anything at Spa. 
She picked up a broken bit of limestone and told them 
what age it belonged to, and then assisted at the dis- 
section of a Gila monster, which she called a heloderma 
suspectem., and classed as one of the saurians. At this 
the passengers marveled. There was evidently nothing 
in the heavens above, the earth beneath, nor the waters 
under the earth that she had not at her fingers’ ebds. 
Nice, taper fingers they were, too. And she was so 
coolly, properly pretty all over that any one of the 
young men, or the middle-aged and married either, 
would have run his legs off for her had she said the 
word. 

There was a corral not far from the springs, and in 
it a half-dozen cowboys were “ lass’ing ” calves and 
clapping their brands on their green young sides. 
Most of the ladies shut their eyes when the hissing, 
hot iron sent its little puff of smoke up from the vealy 
hides, and put their hands over their ears when the 
calves bleated their remonstrance. But not so the 
calm, dissective, analytical Miss Eva Donahower. She 
saw it all, even to the slitting of the ears of the little 
beasts — a further mark of proprietorship— with the 


254 


THE MAKING OF HER. 


first real show of interest that had flashed from her 
eyes on the whole trip. 

She looked at the dust-covered, unshaven men in 
the corral. They wore woolly chaparejos and bestrode 
very lean horses. Here was the plain, unvarnished 
cowboy of real life. She had thought him to be some- 
thing more romantic. 

Ah, there was one who did appear of the type seen 
in magazine pictures. He was cleaner than the rest, 
was shaven, and, furthermore, he was big, dark, hand- 
some and wore his flap-brimmed slouch hat so jaun- 
tily. He might be a Duke in disguise. He looked at 
her and she at him. In that moment there actually 
came to her a sensation. She could not have believed 
it but that it seemed so really real. Her eye swept 
the desert, and a few of the nearest giant cacti were 
not cereus giganteus^ nor vegetation of this or that age, 
but hazy gray-green pillars that shone in a mellow light. 
But this was only for an instant — in a flash — for the 
wild western wind had only lifted the thatch of Bos- 
tonian reserve and erudition ever so little. And there 
was the cereus giganteus, in its monolithical formation, 
with its ligneous fascicles and simplex convolutionary 
paucis, and all the rest of it. 

Petie Grice, the handsome, darksome cowboy, 
watched her as she wended her way along the trail 


THE MAKING OF HER. 


255 


down toward the mouth of the canon, looking for 
geological specimens, and he said : 

“That girl don’t know where she’s going. She 
ought to be looked out for. Red Shirt Canon isn’t 
any place for a woman to wander about in.” 

So he watched her until she had gone along the 
trail a little distance, when some rocks rose up and hid 
her from him. 

Ten minutes slid by, and she did not come 
back. 

Petie left the corral and trotted his broncho down 
the trail until he came to the rocks. There he heard 
a scream — a genuine Boston scream. It came faintly 
to his ears, but it w^as enough to cause a hard prick- 
ing of his mustang’s sides and a reckless dash down 
the canon. 

Where was she ? 

He looked here, he looked there, and he lost much 
valuable time, but he did not find her. The heat-haze 
flickered across the faces of the rocks, distorting them 
strangely. There was no telling where she was. 
Finally he shot out of the other end of the canon, 
which was only a short gash in the ridge, and then he 
saw a cloud of blinding white dust and two horses flying 
away. On one was an ugly, hairy Apache, and on 
the other, very much against her will — for she was 


256 


THE MAKING OF HER. 


firmly fastened there — was Miss Eva Donahower of 
Boston. 

The ten-foot piece of hair-rope, fastened to her 
horse’s head was strained taut, and one end of it 
was wound about the Apache’s wrist. 

It was awfully, reekingly hot, as they skimmed the 
crisp, alkali patches or ambled up the sandy hillocks. 
The sun was smiting the unparasolled Miss Dona- 
hower and was pinking her white face. She was in no 
great terror, for she saw the cowboy in pursuit and 
felt that there was going to be a nice story-book 
rescue, but in that eyeball-searing-blaze, cremation was 
losing another advocate. 

Other things were being apostasized from as well in 
that hard ride. For a placid young woman was be- 
ginning to see something of the earnestness of life as 
exemplified in the Colorado desert, and she was ac- 
tually beginning to have feelings. Story-books would, 
she felt, interest her after this. 

The Apache made the blood run from his mustang’s 
belly, but he could not urge the rearward horse to top 
speed. It is easy enough to ride a horse fast when 
you are on him, but when you are not on him he is 
likely to go his own gait — which is true, though 
slightly Celtic. The led mustang accommodatingly 
stuck his nose forward, putting his head out straight 


THE MAKING OF HER. 


257 


as it was pulled, but that was as much as he would 
do on a hot day like that, after a scant breakfast of 
prickly pears. 

And so Petie rode up in the course of time, and 
then the one-sided firing began. One-sided because 
the Indian had a neat way of keeping Miss Eva be- 
tween them. 

“ Zz-ee ! ” whispered a bullet, very confidentially, in 
Petie’s ear, and “ phwutt ! ” came another that made 
the dust spurt up at his broncho’s feet. He halted. 
This was not pleasant. He had no girl to get behind, 
and it would have been all the same to the Apache 
if he had had one. If only he could (“ phwutt ! ”) get 
the brown brute away from the girl and could get up a 
a little closer, he would (“ zz-ee ! ”) show him how to 
use a six-shooter. 

What’s that ? Something the matter with his gun. 
Got a cartridge jammed in wrong, may be. Or was it 
an Apache trick ? He would take the chances. No- 
body should say that he was not entitled to the name 
of “ Nervy ” Grice, by which he was sometimes known. 
So he rode up with a straight shoot that landed him 
within thirty feet of Miss Eva and her protector. Then 
he jerked his broncho’s head to one side and gave him 
an ugly dig on the flank, and was over to the other 
side of the girl. But you can never catch an Apache 


258 


THE MAKING OF HER. 


that way. He had the pride of the Boston cult be- 
tween him and that six-shooter in a twinkling. And he 
had his knife ready at hand to use at short range, for 
be it known some of those Indians can throw a knife 
as neatly as a greaser can. The cowboy reined up. 
His riata was on his off side, out of sight, and with one 
hand he covertly disengaged it. Then he fired a shot 
over their heads, to distract the Apache’s attention — 
though not to make Miss Donahower scream, as she 
did — and then he out with his riata and threw high 
and hard. It circled through the air with a cutting 
sound and came down very prettily — right over the 
girl’s shoulders. Her dress was thin, and as the 
snake-like noose snapped about her it hurt. 

“ Lift it ! throw it off — quick ! ” he yelled, sticking 
an adjective into the remark that would have shocked 
the young woman at any other time. For he was 
more than merely cut up for having made so bad a 
throw. 

Of course the Indian was now more on the alert 
than ever and matters were at an ugly standstill for 
five minutes, during which the mustangs ceased to 
pant. Then the brown child of the desert smote the 
two horses and they were off on a wild gallop. There 
was no chance for a shot, though the cowboy spurred 
after them on the keen jump. Even had there been 


THE MAKING OF HER. 


259 


an opportunity he would not have tried his six-shooter, 
for his pride had been badly pricked by the miss he 
had made with the lasso and he wanted another 
chance that he might show that young lady from the 
States that he was no slouch of a bull-puncher and 
that he knew how to handle a rope. 

At last he saw the opening for the riata and it 
whisked through the air and closed on the Indian’s 
neck. The Apache tried to throw it off, to stop his 
horse and to reach for his knife, all at the same time, 
and while he was making these efforts the middle part 
of the rope was running over the smooth ground and 
Petie’s broncho was making a deadly leap to the right. 
That leap brought the rope up taut as a fiddle-string, 
and with a mighty jerk that sent the Apache’s head 
rolling on the sand. Which did not look a bit pretty, 
I assure you. 

“ Whoop-ee ! ” blew out the cowboy, full of the 
pride that was in him, “ that was a throw of a thousand. 
It was no pipestem, either, that fellow’s neck. Never 
heard of that thing being done but once before.” 

This was the proper time for Miss Donahower to 
faint, and it was also the proper beginning of a very 
proper proceeding on the part of “ Nervy ” Grice — 
that of taking the girl slowly back to the station in his 
arms. She revived before they got there and said 


26 o 


THE MAKING OF HER. 


that he was a hero, and that his saddle was a very 
uncomfortable one, and wouldn’t he rather have her 
place and let her ride behind ? 

But along the trail through Red Shirt Canon were 
strewn cast-oif bits of Tolstoi, of Ibsen, of Blavatsky, 
of scalpel-wielding analysis and spirit-level placidity. 
Also a pair of eyeglasses. 

She was actually enthused. She told Auntie about 
the occurrence in words of less than five syllables. 
And when she introduced her hero she blushed — Miss 
Eva Donahower of Boston blushed. 

“ And Auntie, dear, he is the modestest young man 
I ever met.” 

“ Modestest ” from the lips of the careful Miss Eva ! 
The bottom must have fallen out of all grammar. It 
was Auntie’s turn to correct. 

Of course the fact that Petie was a nephew of the 
lucre-laden New York Grice and owned all the big 
band of cattle that ranged in Bullhorn valley, had 
nothing to do with what followed. I lay it all to the 
desert air — to the wind which, if you let it strike you 
fair, will blow off even your blue hose, unless it be of 
the skin-tight sort. Yes, the desert wind was the 
making of her. 

This was in October. They married in May, which 
is the month of mating. 


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She sets into her saddle like she ’s glood there, 

An’ she ’s very pert an’ alius mongst the fust ; 

The broncho she ’s a-ridin’ ain’t no brood mare, 

But a feller ’at knows how ter scatter dust. 

Oh^ Moll! don't yer jump them washes ! 

Ter see yer take sech leaps it turns me cold. 

Here she comes a-flyin'^ 

Her “ Loo^ hulloo ! ” a-cryin'^ 

An' her rope on me has got a cinchin' hold. 

Oh ! mebbe she don’t savve breakin’ mustangs ; 

’Bout brands she may fergit a thing or two. 

But when it comes ter lass’in’, why she just hangs. 

An’ she ’s ekal ter the best, no matter who. 

Yeh oughter seen her las’ night in the dust storm, 
When the cattle was cavortin’ wild, indeed ! 

Oh ! mebbe that there gal did n’t go for ’m ! 

An’ perhaps she did n’t stop their mad stampede ! 

* Copyright, 1895, hy Keppler and Schmargman. Reprinted 
from “ Puck ” by permission. 


263 


264 


MOLL, THE COWGIRL. 


Yeh oughter heerd her yellin’ to ’em sassy ; 

’T would done yeh good ter see ’em sober down ; 
No nonsense did she stan’ a bit, that lass, she 
Just faced ’em, an’ she flanked ’em roun’ an’ roun’. 

An’ whether she ’s a-scootin’ crost the prairie. 

Or whether she ’s a-cookin’ fer the gang. 

She’s just the same bewitchin’ little fairy, 

An’ it ’s on her all me hopes an’ dreams they hang. 

With a shooter she ’s as handy as she kin be. 

An’ the boys they see she don’t stan’ any talk ; 

If they dare at her make eyes it would a sin be. 

An’ they know she ’d make ’em git right up an’ walk. 

Well, ’t ain’t no life fer sech a nice young woman ; 

But when I say so, off she flies pell-mell. 

It ’ll take an effort suthin’ more ’n hooman 
To git her into my own strong correll. 

Moll, Moll ! look out for that steer, gal ! 

He ’s got a horn ’j sharp's a Greaser's knife. 

Come, come ter me now, that's a dear gal / 

Feryer more ter me than cattle, gold er life. 

Here she comes a-Jlyin', 

Her Loo, hulloo !" a-cryin'. 

An' she 's more ter me than cattle, gold er 









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